After listening to BP podcasts and such I am trying to decrease my largest monthly expense so was curious to see if its legal to create a separate entrance for the basement and converted into a small 1 bed apartment that I could rent to help offset the mortgage payment in the house.

One of the largest tenant complaints for PMI Georgia is high water bills for an unknown reason.

I will need to occupy the largest of the units since I need a 3-4 bedroom unit for my family. 

No sane person is going to lend you money for an asset that is functionally a mobile home beyond the value of what they would lend on a mobile home (which is NOT MUCH) . . . this is because all the value of the property (as you see it) lies in the operations and location of the structure, which is not owned and therefore not guaranteed. 

Yield is a function of risk.

Effectively, it functions as a free cash/out refi. 

If you owned a $1,000,000 property sitting on $100,000 of land, then the building itself would be worth $900k, but that $900k loses functional value each year by was of depreciation and the GOV lets you claim a loss to compensate for that along the way (there are qualification guidelines here that I don't fully understand, so consult a CPA or someone smarter than me for further insight)So, on the basis of depreciation loss alone you've got the potential for a great tax benefit, not to mention that your interest payments and all the other costs of ownership are deductions, it's a killer deal. 

Hi @Michael Kujawa, if your ONLY looking for rent payment collection and you're not thinking of scaling OR using any other functionality, then you're probably best off using Cash or Venmo.  

If the original ones function fine, I would leave them.  

But, I don’t want to own the properties under my name because I want the properties to function like a business and have business expenses that I could deduct at the end of the year.