Turnkey Property advice

[Steven Taylor]

Hello,

I live in Massachusetts and am new to RE investing. We are looking to purchase in MA and another in a more investor favorable state via a turnkey company. We will hold both properties within an LLC. I am finding that most MA lawyers are not licensed in other states like MO, TN, etc. How critical is it to use a lawyer when purchasing a property via a turnkey provider vs a classical purchase? Also, are there any other alternatives I should be considering besides finding a lawyer for each state?

Thanks for the help and advice!

Steven

[Trevor Fleck]

@Steven Taylor Personally, I have not needed a lawyer to establish an LLC. They are quite easy to establish if you go on the state's respective secretary of state website. I've also used Rocket Lawyer in the past as a cheap way to get one established in North Carolina. I've also had some great success investing in the Cape Coral area of Florida with a turnkey company on new builds. In this case you do need to have a registered agent if you don't physically live in Florida (i.e., a Florida mailing address). Companies like Northwest Registered Agent (not affiliated with them just who I happened to use) helped me both with setting them up as my registered agent and helping me establish an LLC. I want to say the entire fee was around $350.

I'd also encourage you to really assess why you think you need an LLC. Often having umbrella liability coverage over $1m with an insurance company or putting a 2nd lien on a rental property so there is no equity to go after can help you mitigate risk. @Dave Van Horn has some wonderful articles on how to mitigate risk. In short, I think there is a common notion that everyone needs to set up an LLC and a lawyer needs to do that for them and once that's done they have successfully mitigated risk. It's far more nuanced than that and does at the end of the day depend on your finances and risk tolerance.