Should I have a personal LLC or one with my capital partner?

[Logan Eckstein]

Hello all, I'm looking to start investing in small-medium sized apartment complexes and I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up a business entity. I would be funding the down payment and closing costs with capital partners and offering them 70% equity.

From what I understand I would form an LLC with my partner so both of our names would be attached to it. If I did this, I would have to form a new LLC if I wanted to partner with a different investor on another deal. So, would it be better to form a sort of 'personal' LLC that I am the sole owner of and keep my partners on the outside of that? How would I even structure that, legally speaking?

Sorry if this seems like a dumb question, but this side of real estate continues to elude me for now.

[Ryan Seib]

It is fairly simple in half the cases. Most of the time forming a partnership is just forming an LLC with 2 or more owners. When you have passive investor partners, you start talking SEC issues. You can form your own LLC and then have that LLC join the partnership LLC if you want. These complexities are simple in concept, but are necessarily based on written agreements: entities are mute and do not talk to each other other than what is written down. I hope that helps.