All Forum Posts by: Janea L.

I think this depends on your area/market and if you’re going to do it, you have to really go all in. 

I've heard of folks having success with container homes. The tricky part for me is that its difficult to find comps and therefore be able to run an accurate analysis to understand whether it makes sense. 

Depending on the area your thinking of setting up a tiny home, they can be huge hit! But it has to be modern and sleek to catch people's attention. Container homes are some of the biggest novelties right now and people love staying in them and posting about it on social media.

I don't care for them. I would never stay in one.

I like 4 bedrooms or bigger for a vacation rental. 

Start an LLC first and use that for your company, then when I get an investment property I form a new LLC for each one so it's clean and for liability purposes.

 You don't need an entity to flip...just if you get a loan through an institutional lender unless you're going with conventional financing. Most lenders want to make it "commercial" to avoid a lot of the regulatory hassles, so they want to lend to an entity. If you go with a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan, they are going to want to lend to you personally. You don't have to get an entity to flip, but some types of financing require it. 

Every state is different, but here in Florida, setting up an LLC through the State's Department of Corporations at www.sunbiz.org can be done on-line in a matter of minutes. You follow it up by getting EIN (remember to save the SS-4 form you download at the end) at www.irs.gov . That's all it takes here. I'm sure each State has it's own way of doing things. Some states like NY might be more difficult and require attorneys. If it's a single-member, it's simple. We do it ourselves when we need one and it's easy...so easy in fact you can probably wait until you find something, but know your State laws first. If you want to do loans for flips or DSCR loans, you'll need an entity of some sort. If you simply want to buy a property two in your own name and you have enough income to carry multiple mortgages with a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan, then you don't have to have one, but Debt to Income rations become an issue as you start to scale up. Good luck to you!

Setting up an LLC can be done without needing to purchase a property first. If this is your first property, you likely will not be able to get lending through your LLC but will instead need to get a personal home loan and then transfer the home to the LLC after you close on the property. You will need to do 3 things to setup an LLC: get an EIN number from the IRS (this can be done online), create an articles of declaration with your state to form the actual LLC (this can also be done online), and then take both of those documents to a bank in order to create a business bank account. Creating an LLC is a fairly easy process so you likely will not need a lawyer to set it up for you and can instead do it on your own.

Hi Janea,

I agree with the reply to post above. Once a lawsuit is started, the anonymity provided by an anonymous LLC will be removed. Despite this, there is still a benefit to having an anonymous LLC. An anonymous LLC can be useful in deterring a lawsuit before it is started. It is not uncommon in a situation involving a contingency lawsuit for the attorney or the firm who is covering the cost of the lawsuit to research the Defendant before filing the lawsuit. If your name is associated with your LLC or another limited liability entity, this research is much faster and makes it easier to determine whether the LLC and its Member or Members are good targets for a judgment if the corporate veil can be pierced. If an LLC is anonymous, this likely demonstrates that the entity was set up by an attorney and additionally can make the LLC look less like a good target because of the lack of a connection to a Member that is searchable.