Posted by E on October 10, 2004 at 07:48:53:
You should go ahead and form the LLC right away and buy it from within the LLC. What this means is that you get an EIN, open a bank acct and make sure you both contribute to the LLC by depositing money into it. Then, have the LLC disburse the funds to purchase the property.
And to your question, if you are able to find a lender (a private one?) that will lend to the LLC then that is the best way to do it. But it’s tough to find a lender that will lend to LLC…let alone one that won’t require at least one of you to sign for the note personally guaranteeing it.
But what you may have to do, as you suspected, if you’re dealing with a bank, is to have the prop held in (one of your?) personal names in order to get financing. But then, after the financing, you could probably easily get away with transferring the property to your LLC. The banks are generally ok with this since it can be considered an estate planning measure I guess. They’re typically fine (and legally they have to be) with an individual transferring a property into a trust. So, transferring to an LLC is similar so it would be rare to call the loan due barring any other odd circumstances …like you stop making payments.