Partnership w/ Dad - LLC or no?

[Lori F.]

So I found what I think is a great deal. It’s about 2 hours from me in the town I went to college in but not where I live locally. According to the agent I called, she said it has 4 1-bedroom apartments. It’s in downtown 2 blocks from college st so it’s walking distance to campus. Each apartment is renting for $750/month, and the list price on the property is $190,000. I don’t have enough saved for a 20% down payment so my dad is wanting to partner with me on this deal. I own my own house but I’ve never bought an investment property so I have some questions about the best way to move forward.

1) I have a great relationship with my dad. Is it a bad idea to go into business together?

2) I don't have enough personal equity to need an LLC for my first rental but my dad owns another business. Should we form an LLC together to protect his assets?

3) Do we need to form the LLC prior to making an offer on this property or just prior to closing?

4) If we start the process of forming an LLC Monday, will we have time to get it all set up prior to closing?

5) I've read that it's difficult to get financing through an LLC. We only want to put 20% down. Will an LLC cause us problems in that case?

6) If we don't have the LLC formed prior to making an offer, can we purchase from a different entity than the one that the initial offer came from? (Don't want the deal to get away but also want to make sure we're doing the legal stuff right).

Thanks for any help or advice on this! I’ve been searching for deals so long, I wasn’t really sure at what point the legal stuff should happen in comparison to moving forward on a deal.