Asset Protection While HouseHacking

[Ley Nezifort]

Hello BP members,

       My partner and I are in the process of buying 2 multi-fam in Newark NJ which we are going to owner occupy (1 owner in each property). We wanted to get some ideas on how to best limit our liabilities (i.e. protect ourselves against slips and falls, theft etc...) while we’re living in these property. 

We can't find any lenders that'll let us put it under an LLC because we're only putting 5% down, not 20% +

Secondly, though we are partners and splitting everything 50%-50%, we're only putting one name in each contract because we are hoping to repeat the same process again next year, and we didn't want those two deals to negatively impact both of our DTI. We just wanted some overall feedback on this approach, and were also wondering how to go about setting up some legal agreement between the two of us outside of the contracts/deeds.

Thanks,