Can I close wholesale deals without an LLC

[Luis Perez]

Hello everyone. I'm just starting my career in real estate investing in FL and I've been doing a lot of reading and video watching. I'm learning a lot but have not found the answer to a question I've had for a few weeks. Can I close a deal without having an LLC? I've seen some contracts and it asks for my business entity name but I haven't set one up yet. Do I need an LLC to do deals and close? Any advice would be greatly appreciated

[Dell Schlabach]

Originally posted by @Sabrina Kane:

As far as TEXAS and the title company I work with. At least a DBA in your company name is required (but not the law) to WHOLESALE. If you are buying to invest, hold, flip etc. An LLC is needed.

Especially when you are collecting a huge wholesale fee like $8K plus on a deal. ( at the least use a DBA thats about $15 bucks give or take, and looks more professional when you are contracting with sellers and in the business of Finding & Assigning .

To try and convince people who don't have any assets to protect that they need an llc is just very ill advised in my opinion.  

The amount of "wholesalers" who just left guru events and spend time money, get hung up on doing things they don't need yet, is huge. Most get so hung up on complexity of the unnecessary, or the complexity of the actual work, they never do a deal.

It is also not true that you need an llc to invest hold or flip. If you do this requlary and have significant assets worthy of protecting, it is advisable, but not required.

I know plenty of people who have all their properties in their personal name, have good insurance etc to provide protection. One of the things you will find out when you start investing in properties, the difficulty if getting financing for an investment property in an llc, most all banks require them to be in your personal name in order to lend on them.

My advise, do a deal or five, see if you can, or if you like it before wasting unnecessary money, then once you have money to protect set up the llc or corporation to protect it.

Don't get the cart before the horse.