All Forum Posts by: Katie Southard

I am a single house landlord and manage the property. In the future, I plan to have more rentals but more interested in out-of-state investing than in state so I currently only have the one rental. Unfortunately, this problem waste a lot of my time that could be spent on other investments.

I have used the same tax professional for many years and he is very educated, but also much older than me and it's hard for me to understand all the reasons he has expressed why is better to put the rental on my personal tax returns. I understand the obvious reasons, but he has not been easy to explain the reasons why I would like it off my husband and I's joint returns. It's not so much that he is hard for me to understand, but I think the severity of my situation is hard for him to understand.Come on

The short of it is that my husband has extremely high conflict is extremely money hungry, and it really has nothing better to do with her time. While my husband and his ex make a similar income and do not exchange child support due to us pointing that out in court a couple of years ago, she actively request all financial documents that she possibly can and examines our taxes, etc. 

While she is not entitled to my income information, she is entitled to his every year. Because we file joint taxes, This results in me redacting my personal income and investments- ie: The rental property. Even with the redactions, it's not hard to figure out based on deduction how much we are making from the rental and from my income. Anyone could figure it out.

The rental is in my name only and always has been. I lived there for 10 years. My husband lived there for three with me before we bought a house together. My name is still the only name on the mortgage and title. However, the parties yearly financial information exchange makes this a muddy area as far as whether she is entitled to this information. If she is getting close enough to thinking that there will be an income disparity, she will stop at nothing to compel my husband to provide income documentation.

All finances are joint except for the rental, which I keep rents for in a separate checking account and track spending for. I need to convert it to a business checking, but have not done so yet. We also have a nextgen in our primary home that we rent and collect all rents for that to the same account as the rental. Buy and large I manage these rentals and we think of it as my side venture, not his.

i already have the LLC but my tax guy won't file the rental in the llc because he says I need more than one rental and probably a Different kind of business entity. Technically, I have two rentals, but the second one is muddy as above because it's our marital property. So I am less concerned with that one at least for the time.

I enjoy researching many things and solving complicated problems, but figuring this out has not been one of them. His ex is an albatross on our backs and on our personal taxes. I'm not satisfied with not filing the rental in an LLC simply because it's more simple and might cost me an additional filing fee . It doesn't really feel like enough of a reason to expose ourselves to the risk of a costly potential litigation. Is it? Can you have one rental property in an LLC? If you can, why am I getting so much pushback?

Shane what kind of rehabs have you done in the past? Are you actively onsite as GC? What price points? I'd be happy to hear numbers. I loosely work in the building space, lurk is a more accurate term, however because of my unique position I have deeper understanding of the building and rehabbing process than average folks. One thing that would concern me most is any construction issues or defects and the legalities around how those would be handled (former legal experience as well). Lots more questions though- DM me if you'd like. 

I've heard of people doing this, but you need to be rehabbing it enough to make it higher value so ideally you need to be purchasing something that needs some rehab so that you can increase the equity because otherwise you're not gonna have enough equity to pull out

@Aaron Zimmerman and clarify, I am the marketer, my husband designs lighting. I have legal background, billing, office and executive assistant type experience, and now many years of marketing experience as well.

@Aaron Zimmerman you read my mind. That would be an ideal scenario. My problem is knowing who to trust and where to start to find actual deals.

@Bill B. 195 originally refinanced to 224. Owe 200

@Nithin Kumar interesting. Care to share the details? I'd love to look at the layout

@Ken M.  Good reminder. It's not fully closed as in drywall, it's sort of a faux wall on our side, but the tenant could open the door on his side and come through if he wanted. We have an acoustic panel set in there for aesthetics and sound. Not sure about fire marshal would love that though, but at least we didn't drywall it 😫

Also, if it's Lennar, be prepared for problems, insulation issues and therefore paper thin walls. 

@Ken M. we live in one, it has an attached unit, but with a door that passes through from both units. They are designed particularly with mother-in-law or next generational living in mind. The one that we live in has a kitchenette, but not a stove because then it would have to be zoned multifamily. We do have a tenant in ours but have closed off the pass through door. The unit shares the same heating and cooling as my own house. That is one of the issues we noted AFTER moving which is annoying. Luckily our tenant is easy going. 

his entrance has a different front door but not his own house number. 

OP, keep in mind not having access to heating and sharing same water heater and etc will require an easygoing tenant in the nextgen. Pay attention to what's connected. 

we also use the same mailbox. On Zillow, we simply call it #A with the same address.