I have no desire to get an office job and climb the corporate ladder because I get very frustrated when I have to sit inside all day. 

Will depend on several factors like the type of property, type of tenants, your risk tolerance, other assets you own, your estate planning, laws where the property is located, etc.Any lawsuits would be limited to the assets of the LLC and not your personal assets (assuming you run the LLC appropriately and the corporate veil is not pierced).

If all of your income is from rentals, there's probably no benefit to an S Corp or LLC taxed as S Corp. 

However; if you do a search on BP here's several posts dealing with the benefits of different types of corporations.

Some mixed use properties might fall under this depending on the how the lender views the property.If you are buying a SFH as a second home or to rent it out, it would still be a conventional loan, but the lender will likely require a higher down payment and interest rate to make sure you have skin in the game and aren't going to run away.If you are trying to put the property in an LLC, it would have to be a commercial loan because Fannie Mae doesn't lend to corporations.

I am 47 and need to exit corporate America as fast as possible.  

Spent the last 6 years in investment banking, M&A, corporate debt lending, and private equity and have sold a company for $20mm out of my personal firm.I’m still not sure exactly where to start regarding the DD / closing fees.

Personally, I would sell everything and invest in corporate bondsin a public company that can weather a recession at the sametime building two or more 800 FICOs and one or a fewseasoned LLCs targeting 80 PAYDEX scores.Then after this downturn has decelerated,and interest rates are 50% of your bonds,withdraw the cash into something liquid,bypass residential real estate and jump intothe commercial game near the bottomafter analyzing 10,000 commercialproperties over those few years.You should be able to leverage millions.Total cost of plan = a few hundred dollars.This is my opinion and I'm not licensed,John Acheson, MBA

Corporate Housing by Owner .com

But I did it to very qualified borrowers needing to fix credit or to decide if a corporate transfer was going to work out.