Scaling - Safely, effectively, and simply

[Joe Jung]

Hello everyone,

I'm a fairly new investor with 5 properties (1 Primary and 4 in Cleveland, OH) to my name and I'm starting to branch out.  I'll be purchasing a home a Kansas City as well as somewhere in TN and quickly approaching my 10 limit.  Until now, my goal has been simple, get to 10 properties using conventional loans using umbrella loan to mitigate my risk.  That's coming to an end now and it's forcing me to look at other avenues which I narrowed to portfolio lenders, commercial lenders, and hard money lenders. 

I've noticed that all hard money lenders are requiring an LLC (some requiring to be in Delaware) and obviously, commercial lenders will require some form of an entity as well. So my question is this - How have people scaled? Do you have all one-hundred properties in the same corp? Putting each home in a different LLC seems to be a massive headache, not to mention keeping track of all the EIN and entity. I feel like if I'm doing 100 units, those would be worth having in a different entity under a holding company. Not to mention, I primarily invest out of state and I have an LLC in Washington state then I registered it in Ohio when I got my first property and I can't imagine doing that in EVERY state.

So veterans, how have you done this when expanding out of state?  I know I'm barely going to hit 10 properties, but I want to expand and scale in a smart fashion.

Thank you in advance.