All Forum Posts by: Andrew Kiel

I use QuickBooks Online for our business, which is structured as a wholly owned property management company that runs our 20+ houses (across 5 LLCs).  I'm also an ex-Intuit employee who used to support QBO.

It can be a bit tricky to set up in QBO, and when set up properly, it's a huge time saver.  I'm also aware that most people and accountants prefer the desktop version (which is very different).

The reason I like QBO is simply this - payments automation.  Most of our residents are set up through Intuit payments and we ACH their monthly payments every month.  This allows me to account for all our properties and receive funds with relative ease.  When the money moves, QBO knows it and automatically does 90% of the work.  The problem is set-up - it did take a good bit of time and some help from my friends at Intuit and my CPA to set this up properly.

Owner financing can be a wonderful thing for both buyer and seller.  Cut the bank out of the deal, who wouldn't like that!  We often ask what the seller is planning on doing with the money from the sale, they often have no idea and often say "put it in the bank".  Seller financing is great for them because they are able to earn a much higher rate of return, safely and securely, then they could ever get from the bank.  If you were to offer them, say, 6% on their note, is this a lot better than their alternative?  (All this also assumes a free and clear property - if they have a loan there are some other considerations - but still a perfectly doable deal).

The (previous) owner would claim the interest portion of the payment as income - IRS form 6252 should be used for this type of transaction.

We recently did an owner financing deal with a couple in their 80's for a 30 year fixed loan.  They did this quite on purpose because they wanted the kids to inherit a monthly income from them, rather than a lump sum.

When we do a joint venture, we do both an LLC operating agreement and a joint venture agreement, the language states that the JV agreement supersedes the operating agreement if there is a conflict. The property is titled to the LLC. The specifics of this, and why, are definitely best discussed with an attorney.

As Mike mentions, AZREIA is a great place to start, there are some wonderful people in that group with a wealth of information. We also do joint ventures with partners in some cases, and for us, we prefer to use one LLC per partner (not property). This makes things much easier at tax time.