House Hacking a Duplex

[Tomasz Jurga]

A question for those with experience house hacking a multi-family house:

What was the most financially-intelligent way to utilize your tenant's rent to apply it towards your own mortgage payments? I plan to own a duplex and live in one unit; the other unit has a tenant who is elderly and not very tech-savvy, thus he will be paying me monthly using a check. Taking the check, depositing it to my bank, then simply regularly paying the mortgage down seems like the most common sense thing to do, but doesn't seem to be the most financially responsible thing to do when tax season comes around.

Would having an LLC and depositing the check into a business account make more sense? Then working with my mortgage lender to take a portion of money from the LLC's business account plus a specific amount from my personal account? Do I even need an LLC to have a business account from a taxation stand-point? I've listened to the Bigger Pockets podcasts about having an LLC and the immediate answer I can think of is 'No'.

Thanks for any thoughts!