Looking for Advice - Creating a Business Entity for a Partnership

[Zack DeRose]

My brother and I are starting into real estate investing, closing in on our first deal at the moment.

I've been looking into setting up a business entity (specifically a multi-person LLC structured as a partnership) for our ventures - I'm trying to make sure we have an entity in place so we can sign our first property (and loan) in its name.

These are the reasons/goals for this entity:

+ Liability - protecting our personal assets from any liability lawsuits

+ Separation - creating banking/credit accounts in the name of the entity to provide easy visibility to our available capital and easier to maintain our 'books'.

+ Business Lines of Credit - we're looking to put cash down and then refinance our properties. We're both willing to personally guarantee these loans initially, but would like to be able to build our business's credit to be able to eventually (several years down the line) take out loans without our names on them.

We're both in a place financially where we're comfortable not taking any money out of this business venture for the next several years - rather we're both looking to invest considerable amounts of our own cash towards our available capital initially and each month. The goal being to reach some level of financial independence to be able to focus full-time on real estate investing after 5 to 10 years, at which point we would be looking to take salaries from our venture.

Would be very interested in experiences setting up a business entity - things you wished you knew when you got started, things you'd have done differently, especially best way to take advantage of taxes. Also interested in any helpful reading material or other good resources on the topic.

Thanks!!