However, in California, each LLC incurs an $800 annual franchise tax plus gross receipts fees if revenue exceeds $250,000, and property insurance may cost more.

The setup and ongoing fees will likely be higher but you'll be able to leverage the account to buy RE so it's a tradeoff like anything else.Happy researching!

As far as whether to approach them with or without an agent - approaching them directly without an agent can save the seller probably 2.5-3% of fees, which give you some room to negotiate on the price, but you need to be confident that you are capable of evaluating the property value, estimating on the amount of work that is needed, knowing how to negotiate/ structure the deal, and navigating the closing process.

There are plenty of resources online including anderson youtube channel, few other sources are :https://wcginc.com/kb/ and https://wcginc.com/fee-structu... -- They have fixed fee structure to compare with anderson advisors without any blatant selling tactics https://www.kbkg.com/" class="redactor-autoparser-object">https://www.kbkg.com/https://go.empiretaxusa.com/61...If you attend any tax-wise or other 3 day events with anderson which costs $197 + travel expenses you will get enough knowledge on how they operate and you should be able to understand what LLC structure is beneficial, also they have a large collection of online videos with plentiful of information on youtube and tax tuesday webinars.

Spend a year learning and going to meetups before you fork over a $50-$100k franchise fee and half of your profits and don't even know what you are doing.

It is very time consuming to get permit approvals and you may be in a position where you need to extend, pay fees, etc.. when your loan is past due.   

We successfully set up the co-hosting on Airbnb where I receive the agreed upon 18% + the cleaning fee.

Setting up direct bookings is a great way to avoid platform fees!

Quote from @Patrick M Nichols: Cogo is a total scam... lots of fees on the front end.

They will take the permit fee and send an inspector that will provide some assurance that the work was performed correctly.