All Forum Posts by: Cory Smith

Hey guys, thanks for the questions / feedback. Here's my nitty-gritty justification, if you're interested: We have limited capital in a high-interest, high-priced environment. I want to get into RE investing, and my brother wants to get into homeownership, but neither of us can do it alone right now. As prices continue to get higher (which I'm guessing they will), unconventional home ownership and financing is only going to get more common. And, honestly, having an extended family owning a home shouldn't be that big a deal, with most of the risks being basically the same risks that any nuclear family takes when buying a home. All four of us are close, and we're all four educated, licensed professionals with reliable incomes. While this isn't a "real" investment property with tenants, it would give me exposure to leveraged capital appreciation and it would give me a place to make sweat-equity investments other than my own home. And it would do the same for my brother, who like me is pretty handy with a saw. It would put me one step closer to my personal long-term goal of becoming something like a self-employed general contractor, working on my own properties like it's my full-time job. And lately I've felt like all my progress toward this goal has been stifled by prohibitive financing requirements. In the meantime, my wife and I are employed as travel nurses, and Phoenix valley has fantastic opportunities for travel nurse work. Phoenix is also attractive because my wife and I just had our first child, and my retired mother and my brother both live down there, so we'd have good family support for our infant. However, we can't spend more than 6 months per year in one place, or the IRS will require us to pay taxes on our living stipends. It's hard to justify buying a home for just us to use only half the year, and it would be difficult to rent out a house in Phoenix only in the summertime. In summary: It sounds like a crazy idea, but it sure checks a lot of boxes, and it would be a mutually beneficial arrangement for four people who care a lot about each other.

My brother and I and our wives are considering buying a house together in the Tempe, AZ area. My wife and I would be living there seasonally, and my brother and his wife would be living there year-round. It will be their first home purchase, so they're going to be nervous about it. Does anyone have experience doing this? How did you split the downpayment? Did you use a real estate lawyer to structure the ownership and the options for selling the property or for one party to buy out the other? Did everything go smoothly, or did people act like it had never been done before in the history of real estate? Did you use one mortgage from one bank with everyone on the application, or were there two mortgages involved? I expect it would make the seller pretty nervous if there were two mortgages involved... If anyone has any recommendations for good real estate lawyers in the Phoenix, AZ valley, let me know!