Avoiding dealer status as long as possible?

[Amy Prosser]

My husband and I are slowing flipping homes. We live in each flip while we rehab and then sell. Can I treat these flips as a sale of my home? Until I get to a point that I no longer live in them? That way I still pay tax, but not Self Employment Tax.   My husband is retired military, would his retirement pay be considered a "full time job", as it is income unrelated to flipping?  

Also, I keep reading about placing each property in it's own LLC. Is the point of this for reducing taxes, or reducing liability (for your personal assets)? How would the sale of the LLC be treated for tax purposes? And most important, how do you convince a buyer that they really are just buying a house, not a company? What does the buyer do to dissolve the LLC?