Structuring owner-occupied apartment

[Nerissa Vento]

Hello BP members,

My sister and I are looking to purchase a 3 family apartment complex in which she would be using her first time home buyers credit. We will both be living there and we both want to split the cost of everything 50/50 so we are wondering the following:

1.) Can we purchase the property in her name to use the first time home buyers program and then move it to a LLC that has both our names as Managing Members? We want to do this so we can show we each own 50%; therefore, when we go to buy more apartment complexes as investments, the bank will see this on each of our REO schedules (we want to build our portfolios so eventually we will not need to have a sponsor on our deals).

2.) Can we both then receive Tax write-offs/benefits if it's in our LLC?

Overall, we want to know if we each can have both tax write-offs/benefits and show we are 50% owners?

Any advice would help. We will ask our accountant and attorney but I want to be more informed before I know how we should approach this.

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Nerissa