Property owner or property manager?

[Houman Omidifar]

Hello BP landlords,

I am in the process of closing on a SFH as my first rental property. I have been listening to both "The Book on Managing Rental Properties" and "Landlording on Autopilot". Both books recommend to introduce your self as the property manager vs property owner to potential, qualified and selected tenants and not to let them know that you are the owner. In addition I am planning to set this up as a business and have systems in place for all aspects of managing tenants and a property for it to be scalable for myself. I will be repeating this with a new property every year so it wont be a one time event. All of this brings me to the following questions:

• - Am I an independent property manager or should I setup an entity as a property management company?
• - Texas requires to be a broker or have a real estate license in order to setup a property management entity like and LLC. But does that hold if you are only managing your own properties?
• - What are the tax pro's and con's?
• - What are your thoughts and current practice for your own rental properties?
• - Recommendation for a good real estate CPA who has expertise in this matter?

Any comment or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your time!

[Jim K.]

I would add that a lot of this depends on the self-managed property class and location. I own low-C'class SFRs with working class tenants. In the county that I live in, properties can be looked up online easily and their owners are listed. It would be virtually impossible to hide from my tenants that I am the owner unless I dealt with them personally under some kind of assumed name or put all the properties in an LLC.

But I introduce myself as the OWNER, my lease identifies me as the LANDLORD, and I conduct myself as if the buck stops with me. You simply have to deal belly-to-belly with your tenants in this property class if you don't want to make your life hell. I grew up in an SFR almost exactly like the homes I own today. I know somethong about these people and the challenges they face.