All Forum Posts by: Victor G Perez

Anyone has an operating agreement for Texas Series LLC?

Thanks all for the advices.

About why flip instead of hold, my realtor reasoning is that the pool adds to the liability when renting, and needs to be maintained properly, that's an extra cost, and given the rental rates in the area and the potential resale value, it seems like renting wouldn't provide much so much cashflow to make sense, it would barely break even or even have negative cashflow.

My wife is of the same opinion, while for me renting even if it doesn't provide that much cashflow, makes more sense due the extra taxes when flipping. After thinking a lot about it we have decided that once we are done with the rehabs, we will see about renting it, if we can get a good rate that supports keeping it, if that's not the case, then after a year renting sell it and count it as investment that has more favorable taxes, and we probably would reinvest the capital gain right away in another.

As for my previous house that I sold in 2013, that was my own home, lived in it 3 years, and when I sold it I used most of the profits to buy my current home, so I can't remember now my tax filling for that year, but I think I didn't have to pay any taxes or very little for that. It was not a investment property by my primary residence.

For a CPA, I have been waiting a couple of days in case someone had extra recommendations, but I am planning to start calling Doug Tidwell as recommended by Kris above.

Nina, my broker looked at rent, recent house sales, comps, etc, besides having a pool to recommend rehab and sell vs hold, among those reasons were the pool and the extra liability when renting with a pool. But no one told me about finding a CPA until I started investigating myself. 

Kris thanks for the tips. Any preference on one over the other for my case?

What should I look at to find the right CPA?

Forgot to mention before, but how much should I expect to pay for a competent CPA? I have never hired one before, and only ever hired a lawyer back in Spain, not in the USA.

Hi all.

First let me introduce myself.

My name is Victor, I have been living in the Austin area for 10 years now, originally from Spain.

I bought my first home in Austin in 2009, and sold it for a good profit in 2013, when I married, to buy another home with my wife.

Ever since, I have been wanting to invest some money in real state, mostly to avoid just having cash seating in the bank, and build some equity for the time when we retire.

At different times we have looked at different types of properties, but for one reason or another we would just stop looking for a while and then start over again.

Just a few months we started looking again, I wanted to find some investment property that provided some positive cash flow, but after talking with some friends, realtor, mortgage broker... it seemed that it could be better to find another property to move to, and rent our current home out, since we got it at a good price in 2013 and should get a good rent.

Now, while looking for that, I found a house I thought had good potential with some renovations, and long story short, we ended up in a contract to purchase it. My broker and my wife think it's much better to rehab and sell it than rehab and rent, in part because it has a pool.

So now we are in the process of buying a house, to remodel and hopefully sell fast enough, and that's when I started wondering about taxes, liability and what not. For the last week or so, since we entered the contract, I have been reading all I can in my free time, but that has resulted in more questions than answers.

At the moment we don't have any LLC, Corp or anything like that. Our professions are not related to real state or construction, and I never had to constitute any kind of company in the USA (did back in Spain, but laws have nothing similar).

After much reading, the only two things I'm starting to get clear are: that buying and selling within a year has very different tax implications than living in your home for a few years then selling it, and that I should find at least a good CPA and possibly a good lawyer specialized in real state to figure out how to structure this to minimize taxes and liabilities.

At the end of the day, my goal remains the same that I want to end up with a couple of investment properties, don't necessarily need to base my retirement on that, but just to not have all my eggs in the same basket. But doesn't seem like we are going to hold to this property.

Can someone give me a bit of advice what's the best way to structure the first flip? should we setup an LLC or any other kind of business, knowing that we will use contractors for the biggest items?

And can someone recommend good and inexpensive (or should I say not too expensive) CPA and lawyer, knowing that I don't want to spend a lot of effort and money on setting up a structure for what could be the only operation of this type we ever do?

Sorry for the long post and thanks all for your answers.