Buying a rental in an LLC or your own name
Plenty of investors choose between an LLC and their own name on the advice of whoever they asked first. Ron Phillips and Jenni Ellis put the two side by side on liability, cost, complexity, financing, and privacy.
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Both routes work. They fail in different places.
The usual answer is a rule: always use an LLC, or skip it and buy more insurance. Either way it comes from someone else's portfolio and says nothing about yours. The decision turns on five things: how exposed you are, what you'll pay, how much paperwork you'll carry, what the lender will ask for, and who can look up your name.
Hold your own portfolio up to those five. You'll see which trade-offs you can live with.
The questions Ron answers
What an LLC protects, and what it doesn't
An LLC makes the company the owner, so a tenant's claim reaches it and not your savings. Its name goes on the public record instead of yours. The protection holds only if the company keeps its own bank account and books. Mix the money and a court can set it aside.
This is educational information, not legal or tax advice. Talk to your attorney and CPA about your specific situation.
What each route costs to run
When buying in your own name there's no entity to form, and the rent goes on your personal return. An LLC runs roughly $400 to $1,600 a year on one property in fees and filings. Some states add more, like California's $800 minimum franchise tax, and buying outside your LLC's home state can mean registering there too.
This is educational information, not legal or tax advice. Talk to your attorney and CPA about your specific situation.
What changes about the loan
In your own name, conventional loans stay on the table alongside DSCR. Most DSCR lenders will lend to an LLC but want a personal guarantee, so you still sign for the debt. Some also want the LLC to exist for 90 days or more before funding, which means forming it early.
When an LLC starts to pay for itself
On one property, the yearly fees rarely justify themselves. The math shifts as the portfolio grows, usually between three and five properties, and a series LLC, one company with a separate compartment for each property, changes it again where your state allows one. The crossover gets worked on screen.
Illustrative example. Actual returns vary.
Buy in your name now, move it later
Buying in your own name and moving to an LLC later works, with one catch. Retitling can let the lender call the loan, so talk to your lender first. Lineage's lending team can help. An umbrella policy adds liability coverage above your property policy under either route, and Lineage Insurance can place one.
This is educational information, not legal or tax advice. Talk to your attorney and CPA about your specific situation.
Live Q&A
Then we open it up and answer your questions live.
No pitch, no upsell, and no property pushed at you at minute 25.
What this session is not
Ron Phillips, CEO of Lineage
Ron has spent more than 20 years buying rental property and helping other investors do the same. He has built six companies, one of which landed in the top 25% of the Inc. 5000. He is a national speaker and a best-selling author. He still owns rental property, which is why this session sounds like a conversation with a peer and not a seminar.
He spent those years as the connective tissue between the brokers, lenders, insurers, and property managers who each hold one piece of a deal. In 2024 he co-founded Lineage to put those pieces in one place.
The Lineage founding team has helped more than 6,000 investors complete over $1.5 billion in transactions (as of Q1 2026). Lineage is a new company. The experience behind it isn’t.
Save your seat
We’ll send your join link and a calendar invite. No spam, and you can opt out anytime.
At least two sessions a month
Lunch & Learn runs on Thursdays at 1pm ET / 10am PT, at least twice a month. Every session is 30 minutes, ends with live Q&A, and is free to attend.
Next up is Buying a rental out of state, on Thursday, October 22.
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Common questions
Yes. Free to attend, free to watch later.
30 minutes, plus time for questions at the end.
No. Register and we’ll send the recording. Live is better if you want to ask Ron something directly.
It’s built for investors who already invest and are deciding whether rental property earns a place in the portfolio. If you’ve owned property for years, you’ll still get the math. You won’t get talked down to either way.
No catch. Lineage makes money one way, a flat $749 when you buy a property through us, and only when you close. This session is education. If you want to talk to someone afterward, you can. If not, watch and go.
Yes. We save time at the end for live Q&A.
Can’t make it live? Register anyway.
We’ll send the recording straight to your inbox.