For some time I have toyed with a concept similar to a real estate investment club that I would like to throw out for discussion: Taking a modified version of the stock investment club concept and use it for rental housing ownership and management. For those who are unfamiliar with stock investment clubs, this is where a group of people gets together, discusses various stock investments and then, as a group, purchases the investments the group has decided upon. When done right some of these have been quite successful. Even those groups that have not been raging successes have helped the participants learn enough about the stock market to avoid mistakes on their own. Then there is Motley Fool, which is this idea to its extreme.

Basically the vision is a group of people with similar values who define best practices in purchasing and operation of rental housing. The group then implements those practices in a manner where each participant shares in the work, the investment and, of course, the profit. This would be more like a business partnership than a social club, action rather than academics.

Definition: Best practices is what you would do if you had the time, knowledge, experience and access to the financial recourses to operate your business in the best possible manner that would ultimately yield the greatest longterm profits and security with the least amount of problems. If the ideas and methods created in the group are truly best practices they will also be valid for your own businesses as well.

The ideal mix of participants would include a number of different people from a number of perspectives and backgrounds such as finance, construction, law and property management. The group should also contain some folks who may be short on knowledge but high on drive and work ethic.

What kind of projects? Could be anything from newer suburban multifamilies to rehabbing small urban properties. I have some ideas, but lets keep it open to all ideas. If you are interested in looking into this more let me know.

Point of clarification: While I would expect that most if not all of the participants would be association members, this is clearly not an association project.