Protecting Primary Home

[Aaron Taulbee]

I'm in the market to buy my first investment property, likely a duplex in the Atlanta suburbs. I've been fortunate to have bought/sold my first home and roll the majority of the profit into my current home, so I have $200k+/- equity in my current residence. I plan on holding title to my investment property(s) with an LLC, and I will likely purchase an Umbrella policy to boot. Questions:

1. Do most investors put their primary residence into a seperate LLC or their wife's name? Would this be beneficial in a "worst case" pierce the Investment LLC veil scenario?
2. Do most use give their personal address to tenants for mailing checks to, or do you use a PO Box to keep them from knowing where you live?
3. Anyone use Google Voice or similar to have a seperate number for tenants to call apart from your real cell phone number?
4. Am I overthinking the need for anonymity?

Any help is appreciated. I've really enjoyed the wealth of information I've been absorbing on this webpage to date.

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

One trick I heard from an attorney to protect your primary home is to take out an equity line against it that you use only minimally. When it's recorded on title, it's recorded for the full credit line amount regardless of what you actually owe on it. If somebody is looking to sue you and does an asset check, it looks like you have a highly leveraged property with little equity in it even though you have little to nothing actually borrowed on the equity line.

If you opt for this, make sure to read closely the terms on the equity line so you're not surprised with minimum withdrawal amounts, upfront fees, etc.