I am starting to build a rental (mostly multi familly / commercial) investment portfolio and was wondering if I should put them into LLC (single member) or elect for S-corp.I understand before the new tax law LLC was easier with no salary requirement but with the new pass thru using 25% of W2 + 2.5% all rental would qualify for the full 20% deduction (being over a certain threshold of income you are required to use some formulas and cannot take the full 20% automatically).I estimate the profit for the portfolio to be in 250-400K (without any salary taken out).What do you guys think?

If one spouse of a couple dies, typically all property automatically goes to the surviving spouse rather than to children. 

So I wouldn't assume that they automatically go to a higher loan to value. 

We are trying to decide if we should upgrade the garage to an automatic door so future tenants can start using it. 

That is just one example of many things a CPA would automatically think about that a new real estate investor filling out taxes on his/her own might not even know to look into.

. : )Some states have where you can automatically become a broker but there are not many of them.I agree you need to see how an office is ran.

Their books will be used to handling this.   2) in that term, they'll try to negotiate an automatic option; you want them to be held to give you a notice within a REASONABLE amount of time-- how long do you think it'll take you to find another tenant in 5 years? 

The stats are interesting, but don't Chicken Little about them automatically.

We own 40+ units, right now, we use google spreadsheet to track maintenance requests, unfortunately, it involves lots of manual work in the process.Request come in through email or phone call-> record it in the maintenance request spreadsheet-> dispatch to handy man->send notification to tenants->follow up the status of a request->close the requestWe want to automate the work in the above process, such as 1. automatically create issue in the system from email (Lots of our tenants are not tech-savvy, email or phone call is probably easy for them to report problems)2. when a request is dispatched, email notification to the tenant and handy man are automatically sent out3. generate report of requests, so that we can track its statusWhat's your experience and suggestions?

With some utility companies, the tenants calls and transfers the service in their name, and that automatically cancels the service that's in your name.