LLC name change affect on lending, business history, & credit

[Chike O.]

Hello,

I formed an LLC about 4.5 years ago which I have used for buying and flipping property. I never thought about building business credit until about this week when I came across someone selling services to do just that instagram, and decided to look at what I could do on my own. Anyway, I started researching things you can do to build your business credit history, and one thing I saw mentioned, including on BP, is that lenders (mainly banks I believe) dont like when your LLC is in one of the categories considered "high risk", one being real estate investment. Also, it was recommended to not have words such as "property", "investments", "real estate..." etc in your LLC name, as it can be/is a red flag to lenders and can make it a challenge to get lending.

Of course my LLC name is ____ Investments, haha. Before starting some of the tips for building business credit ie: duns number, some net30 accounts, 411 listing, etc, I wanted to change my LLC name now, before starting the process.

I debated on just doing a new LLC, but I didnt want to lose my 4.5 years of seasoning that my current LLC has. I then looked into just changing my current LLC name, which I see that you can do, as well as keep the same EIN. I thought perfect, my business will still be considered almost 5 years old, until I saw that some banks consider an entity name change as basically "starting over", which means I might as well keep it simple and do a new LLC if this is the case.

Any thoughts? Am I overthinking things and should I just keep my current LLC name and not risk losing out it 4.5 year formation history?

Thank you,

[Jonathan Taylor Smith]

Hello @Chike O. - That's not my experience... At least not here in North Carolina. I've changed two business names. One due to acquisition of / merger with another company, and the other due to change from INC to LLC. In both cases, on the NC Secretary of State Website, it showed the same company start date, with just a merger or amendment notation and I never lost favor with creditors due to the change.

J.T.