Rental Property Investor · NJ · Member since 2020 · 12 posts · 2 votes
I'm looking to set up a separate bank account for my first rental and was wondering if anyone had best practices to share? The property will be in an LLC. Ideally, I would love to set up an ally-type-account to hold the reserves because of the savings interest rate they offer (though it has decreased lately) and then find a credit card with no annual fee and decent cash back (there will be a big rehab on this one). However, I expect to repeat this process many times over the next few years and am worried that multiple different accounts for every property will end up creating a much more complex web than simply opening a bank account at Bank of America or Chase each time and using one of their popular credit cards. While I might lose a little, is the simpler approach the smarter one in this instance? I don't want to be penny-wise pound-foolish.
Well, there is the thought that you don't have to have a LLC, especially due to the added overhead you are mentioning and the additional expenses (one big one is having to use commercial loans). But, your post wasn't asking about this...
You really need to have one bank account to one LLC. You could simplify some of your life by having more than one property in a LLC, assuming your financing allows it.
Another is to have a set of "property LLC's" that just hold Title to the property. Name the LLC the street address to make it easier to keep track. Then, you have a mgt LLC that does the leasing and pays the mortgage and taxes. You'll need to have a legal agreement between your two LLC's to make this happen and prevent piercing your corporate veil. Now, while you might have a ton of bank accounts, you are really working out the Mgt LLC as the property LLC's are "cashless" entities. This also simplifies your credit card issue since you'll only really need one, or set, for your mgt LLC.
I hope this helps. Good luck.
P.S. Where in NJ are you? Message me if you want to connect.