Best legal structure with high-earner spouse?
Hi BP,
First a little background on my situation: I am married with two young boys, ages 2 and 4. My wife is an MD and earns $200k+/year. When we had kids, I was working as a traveling nuclear reactor technician and would live on the road for 7 months out of the year, and although the money was good, hers was much better so it made sense for me to stay home and be Mr. Mom. My wife has great income but no real interest in being actively involved in RE investing. I now have very little income but want to focus all my energy on building a rental portfolio to eventually replace her income. We both have 800+ credit.
Our long term plan is to own many single family and small multi family rentals, hopefully purchased and financed using the BRRRR method. We currently only own one single family rental, it's doing fine, but we realized we need to have a plan moving forward if we want to own 30+ one day.
All that said, my question is this: What is the best structure for buying homes using my wife's income to qualify for financing, but another entity to own and collect rent? The long term goal is to continue buying houses after my wife hits the 10 mortgage limit and also to free up her credit.
For example, a local lender (who specializes in delayed closing loans specifically used by BRRRR investors) suggested I do this: 1.) Use our cash to fund a purchase and rehab. 2.) Refinance using my wife's income and credit. 3.) I form an LLC in my name to collect rent and act as a property management company. 4.) After doing this 10 times, now the income I receive from the LLC is high enough to allow me to qualify for loans, so we could either do 10 more in my name or repackage the mortgages in my wife's name into a commercial loan.
Am I missing anything in this plan? Is this efficient or does it even make sense?! I think it sounds like a good plan but I'm hoping some professionals and more experienced investors can give me advice!
Possibly my wife should "own" the properties in an LLC for liability reasons, but still have it managed by my LLC? Of course my wife gets hammered with taxes, so I'm hoping she gets most of the tax deductions to offset that, ie she gets all the paper losses but I get all the income? If it matters, we file taxes married/jointly.
I know that was long winded and I hope it made sense, thanks for reading!
Matt