Starting a private REIT

[Joshua Craig]

I'm looking at starting a private REIT with friends and family. My idea is to form an LLC with ownership equally spread across all investors. After this is done, my idea was to have everyone (around 10 ppl) invest $500 a month with a compounding 10% increase in investment every year. There would be a minimum of 1 property purchased per year for 3 years, and the profits from each property would not be available for withdrawal, and would just contribute to the funds future of investment. My thought is that after 5 year or so if there are 6-10 properties owned, the fund could liquidate all properties, or borrow against them to buy an apartment complex, and continue on a path towards having more and more multi family or commercial properties owned. At some point, we would begin taking monthly or quarterly dividends or distributions, but the goal would be to atleast do 3 years of all in investment, maybe more. Has anyone done something similar? Or have any critiques? I've talked to everyone I want to invest, and they all are on board.

[Don Konipol]

@Joshua Craig. I don't thing you really want the time, hassle and cost of a REIT; I think a LLC structure would be much more appropriate.

As to the operating plan, I foresee the probability of many problems as participants needs, desires, risk tolerance, and expectations change over time. Seems like a lot of moving parts for a rather small amount of invested capital. These monthly commitment plans don’t seem to ever work out. But should you decide to pursue it I wish you the best of luck.