If you own 25% or more of any LLC you are required to register with a FINCEN ID for beneficial ownership by January 1st or you could be subject to $500 per day fines.Have you taken care of business?

I'd like to keep savings and be able to hire out some of the work (something we have not done in the past).My thoughts are to put both into an LLC and look for investors or a business loan, and purchase and move to a new home.

Also, are you planning on going through an LLC?

I am not sure how much you get involved but do your employees contact the realtor and discuss market rents, do the math to check leases versus market rents and which lenders use the "lesser of the two".Closing in an LLC versus personal name can also add a rate hit as well as Escrow or No escrow.

Over the past 24 months I've built two homes and renovated another, but I now realize I may have hurt my financial positioning by using all cash and not setting up some sort of LLC for these projects.

Main Edge Properties, LLC in Mustang is one of my companies.

I have a LLC set up, and property management software ready to use.

I've heard that maybe one way to do it is to put one home in an LLC in their names and one of the daughters. 

You can't even sue him for Failure To Perform because your contract stipulates that he has 3 more years to prove that he can perform.After you wait 5 years and lose all your hair you finally get to pay an attorney $50,000 to sue the syndicator, but the project is an LLC corporation and you can sue only that corporation.

As others said, you can look to self-direct your retirement funds, potentially using a checkbook IRA LLC structure as well.