Does anyone use the online filing services or do most investors file on their (your) own?

If anyone uses these services, do you have any feedback on the service(s) you've used and what you liked or disliked about them? Any issues? Any reasons you've found it better to diy?

In my state it's not overtly complicated. The form is easy and I complete it on the secretary of state online. Cost about 125.00 per llc corp filed.

The costs in CA I bet sure are much higher.

Thanks super realtor. What about operating agreements? Do investors most often not bother with them, or do they use service companies or attorneys?

(p.s. Actually the state fee to file LLC in CA is only $70.00. On the other hand, CA also has a minimum franchise tax of $800 after the first year of existence.)

If anyone needs it, here's the link to the Secretary of State for California. Just click on the link for LLC and you'll jump down to the forms and fees area.

http://www.sos.ca.gov/business/bpd_forms.htm

Linda

My suggestion would be to use individual trusts to hold each property, along with 3rd party trustees (or possibly an entity of your choice). From there, you can place a single LLC as the beneficiary for all the trusts.

This essentially does the same job, and will save you a ton of $$ in entity costs & maintenance.

I hold 4-5 properties in each llc. I use bizfilings.com to set them up. Then I have a different llc that has a management agreement with each of the "owner" llcs. Then you don't have to have seperate checking accounts and such for each llc, just the managment llc as that is the one that signs leases, pays bills, etc.

Setting up any entity (llc, corporation, trust) is worthless unless you operated it like it is a true business. If you cut corners, the protection will NOT hold up in court.

[quote=ScottFicek][color:#FF0000] I hold 4-5 properties in each llc. I use bizfilings.com to set them up. Then I have a different llc that has a management agreement with each of the "owner" llcs.[/color] [/quote]

I like that idea ... I planned on a separate LLC for multiple properties - a business, personal and joint venture - but didn't think of setting up a managing LLC.