Can I rent out my garage to a foreign business entity?

Question

Hi,

I own a house in TN for a primary residence. I've been offered by my mother-in-law who owns an online retail business in South Korea and needs a warehouse in the US to store goods. And she thought that it would be great if she has a legal ground to benefit us by leasing our garage as a part of the storage for her business. She does not have ITIN, US visa, nor US bank account. In this case, would it be possible to write a lease agreement for this situation?

Regards,

Tim Delaney · Answer

@Minsu Kim I am not entirely sure on the legality of signing a lease and accepting rent from a foreign business but I’m pretty sure you will want to tread carefully.

1) if you live in a residential neighborhood it may be a code or zoning violation to operate a business - especially a warehouse - from your property.

2) based on my experience with banks and depositing money they are under a LOT of pressure to prevent money laundering and the funding of terrorist organizations. The banks often do this by HEAVILY scrutinizing large deposits and especially foreign transactions. If you have regular payments coming in to your account from overseas and especially from a business that has no legal presence in the US they may arbitrarily freeze your accounts.

Just a couple worse case scenarios.

Anthony Dooley · Answer

Doing business with family rarely turns out well. It will most likely end in everybody being mad at each other and not speaking. If everything goes perfectly, how much could you possibly make? Probably not enough to ruin your relationship. She can rent a self-storage unit.