One LLC per property, or one for all of them?

The argument for a separate entity per property is liability isolation: a claim arising at one property reaches the assets of that entity and stops. The argument against is friction. Every entity is a filing, an annual report, a registered agent, a bank account, its own bookkeeping, and often its own tax return. Three factors usually settle it. Equity is the first — isolation protects equity, so a portfolio of heavily leveraged properties has less to protect than a portfolio of paid-off ones. Count is the second: the administrative load is linear, and past a certain number of doors it stops being free. Financing is the third and it is the one people forget: many residential lenders will not lend to an entity at all, and transferring a property into an LLC after closing can trigger a due-on-sale clause. Two middle paths get used a lot. Grouping properties into a small number of entities by risk profile or geography captures much of the benefit at a fraction of the cost. And a holding company owning several operating entities centralises the bookkeeping while keeping the liability walls. None of this works without the operational discipline underneath it: separate accounts, no commingling, the entity signing the leases and the contracts, and adequate insurance. An entity run loosely is the one a plaintiff's attorney asks a court to look through. This is a conversation for a Florida attorney and a CPA together, because the liability answer and the tax answer are not always the same answer. This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Rules change and every deal is different — check your own case with a licensed professional. Alberto Zaltzberg — Adonait · adonait.com