My father owns 5 residential properties. His strategy is to buy and hold. Now, all these properties are in low income areas. I want to establish a company where I can put some of these properties under a company name. The main reason is I just want to protect our other assets if we ever get sued or anything. I just wanted to get opinions from other people out there. Like how do you guys protect your investments, what is the best way? Do you setup your investments under a LLC or do you setup each individual investment under an LLC? Whats the best?

one LLC with a nice umbrellas insurance policy should suffice

Checkout the podcast section of this site and tune into podcast 109. Listen to it a couple of times, it really helps you to understand what's required.

Also look into setting your LLC in states such as Delaware or Wyoming for maximum protection. You can do some further reading here: http://www.corporatedirect.com/

Check the link under Bulletproof Your Corporation. Garrett Sutton is very knowledgeable and speaks on the Rich Dad circuit. I use this company for my corporate formation and management and am happy with their work. I don't receive anything for endorsing them.

@Juan Llamas  Come sense, learning, studying successful and non successful people will prepare you more than any entity.  

Frank

I'm sure everyone has horror stories, but renting in the low income arena reduces your odds of being sued.  Most tenants will not have the resources or follow through to sue, and things can often be solved with a keys for cash agreement.