Real Estate Trusts?

Question

I need to do something w/ my properties...I have been buying one house every 3 months or so over the last year and I now own 6 properties including my own primary house...

I know I need to put them into either an LLC or separate Land Trusts...Im leaning towards the individual trusts for each property but what I dont like is how I cant mix the funds from each property as I currently do...Is there any way around this?

I currently have a separate bank account for all my properties from which I pay my bills/mortgages and deposit all rent checks, is there anyway I can still use one account but have more liability/legal protection?

Dan Nguyen · Answer

Thanks. I was familiar with separating liability, but wasn't sure if $200K was a specific number to use as limiting equity.

Randy H. · Answer

The Series LLC solves this problem. Each "cell" within the LLC is insulated from the others. Effectively, you have multiple LLC's without having to set up multiple entites.

Jim Sharp · Answer

The idea is that if one LLC is sued, they can't take from another one.  That way if you had $1,000,000 in equity in just one entity and it was sued... well that could become a problem.

You can get very creative with diffusing liability.

Randy H. · Answer

You might want to consider using the Series LLC. This relatively new entity is legal in at least 14 states and takes the place of multiple LLC's as beneficiaries of multiple Land Trusts. This saves you lots of time, money and administrative head aches.

Dan Nguyen · Answer

Is that just a personal preference for liability reasons?

Randy H. · Answer

Just set up a "property management account" to funnel all rents to. then, you can disburse funds out of the management account to whereever you want.

randy hughes

Jim Sharp · Answer

You can have each property in a land trust and make the beneficiary of that trust an LLC.

Some people like to have no more than $200k equity in each LLC.  You can make new LLC's under the umbrella (original) LLC.  The funds can flow through the same bank account.