First Home Buy/Rental Banking and Accounting?

[Karl Sperl]

Hello BP Community.

I'm going buy my first home in the next few months. I am currently renting, but looking to buy a multifamily and househack to get started in REI.

Currently I have 1 checking and 1 savings account through my main bank, and 1 savings account in a high interest savings online bank (where I keep the money I plan on paying for my home purchase costs).

I am wondering what the best method is for banking/accounting for a rental property. Scanning through other forums it looks like many people open 1 checking and 2 savings accounts (1 for security deposit and 1 for cap ex/repair). Any opinions on this? Also I was wondering if many of you prefer to setup the savings accounts in a higher interest online bank (like Goldman Sachs Marcus). What is the best way to setup your banking to scale in the future?

I wanted to ask the BP Community first before consulting a local CPA.

Any insight is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[Matt Leber]

@Karl Sperl first would like to say GO GATORS! Noticed your profile pic and couldn’t resist. We thought about doing separate accounts for capex and deposits as you mentioned above, but ended up opting for just one ‘rental’ account that everything for all our real estate goes in and out of. This keeps it simple without opening too many accounts. And we have a business credit card that we use for all the real estate expenses to keep track of those transactions. Payment for the CC comes out of our ‘rental’ bank account. I’m sure others will have good advice, but this system has worked well for us.