Posted by Tom on October 14, 2001 at 16:26:19:
The first, and most important step to protect your assets is to put each property into a Land Trust, with a trustee with a name not the same as yours.
Several of the gurus have courses on Land Trusts. Putting a property into a land trust is quite simple, and you can probably do all the paperwork yourself.
Later, when you have several properties, you might want to set up an LLC as the property manager, and the LLC can hire you to be the manager. This is handy when tenants want something big done, as you have to run it by your “boss” first.
Corps are to be avoided until you get very big, because of the double taxation problem. But, when you do get maybe 40 or 50 or more properties, you may want to form a C corp, because the officers of a corp are entitled to some very nice benefits, tax free, such as a company car, health insurance, etc.