Last year this cost me thousands of dollars in extra taxes.  

Big dogs can ruin hardwood floors pretty quick .

contract assigning is selling real estate without a license and starting to be regulated more and more.. the laws are on the books but with all this guru training and such the internet spawned thousands of wood be wholesalers on the unsuspecting public and that has created  so many terrible deals.the ones that simply walk away from a 20 dollar EM deposit with no worries what damage they may have a caused a seller.. 

Do not also forget about the transaction cost to setting up a trust to pay an attorney a few thousand dollars to do so, and possibly needing to file a separate income tax return for the trust, again, dependent on the type of trust.Putting the property into an LLC is certainly an option, but you could run into creditor issues if one of the owners of the LLC (your brother) lives in the property.

He has an Eco-System membership network with hundreds, maybe thousands, of trained individuals, both sponsors and passive investors.

I would prefer to go directly to the sellers broker to avoid having any communication issues as things often get interpreted incorrectly and too much back and forth can ruin a deal.

In order to go from 2 units to 12 you'll likely need a fair amount of leverage, which may take you out of your comfort zone, carrying the student debt plus hundreds of thousands more in mortgages.I think the plan you've laid out sounds solid, picking up another property and paying down debt. 

The best thing to do is try to do a short sale just so your friend's credit doesn't get ruined from foreclosure.

I don't want to be stuck paying thousands for a trailer I already possess.  

I have my ATP and thousands of jet hours but just getting back into General Aviation to supplement my RE biz and personal family travel.