Newbie Business Structure

[Cornelius Charles]

Hi all. My business partner and I are new to RE investing and are in the process of gathering as much information as we can. One of the things we were told was that we should start off as either a LLC or S-corp (or maybe both depending on our strategy) sooner rather than later. Digging through a couple of the threads on BP, it seems like there is a general consensus that newbies should complete a few deals before worrying about setting up a corporate structure. My partner and I are fairly certain that we want to start off by wholesaling and rehabbing and then look for passive income opportunities as we grow our business. One issue that she is worried about is that she already owns a condo that she is renting out, and how that can be affected should a deal go awry and someone tries to take legal action. Bottom line is, how can we determine what we stand to lose if we don’t set up our corporate structure right away (whether it’s tax incentives, legal protection, etc.), and can we gain any tax benefits that we may have missed out on otherwise if we set up our corporate structure after completing a couple of deals? I’m still feeling my way around this website, so if there are any articles or documents on here that someone can point me to, that would more than suffice. There also seems to be an even split on whether people believe you should have an entity set up this structure for you, or if you should save the money and do it on your own. This seems like it will be such an important step in the process that it may be worth our while to shell out the money to make sure it’s done right. Thanks everyone.

Cornelius