04:16
Robert Chadwick
Hi everybody, this is Robert Chadwick with America Mortgages. Thank you for joining us for another webinar. We’re very excited to be joined today by Bobby Casey of Business Anywhere. If you’re familiar with Business Anywhere, they are one of the premier companies that assist with setting up an LLC amongst other things. But for our purposes in this webinar, we’ll be discussing what an LLC means, how to establish it, and the benefits of an LLC as a foreign investor or U.S. expat investor obtaining a mortgage or purchasing a property in the U.S. What Casey will cover will be a variety of things. After Casey presents, I will go over our normal standard process on how to obtain a mortgage as a foreign national and U.S. expat, and then we will have a question and answer session towards the end. So Casey, thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. Maybe you can introduce yourself and your company and then we can go from there.

06:07
Bobby Casey
Sure. Well, thanks, Robert, for having me today. Also, I appreciate having a chance to talk to your audience. Well, it should be interesting for anyone interested in investing in real estate in the U.S., whether you are us citizen living abroad as an expat, or maybe living nomadic, or if you are a non-U.S. person interested in investing in the U.S. market. So just a quick background about myself. I’m an international tax lawyer. predominantly what I’ve been doing for 20-plus years is tax, asset protection, and location consulting for location-independent entrepreneurs around the world. Several years ago, we basically decided to build a software platform to automate a lot of things when it comes to company formation, company compliance, annual renewals, that sort of thing.

07:10
Bobby Casey
And basically, we spun it off as a company and that’s kind of how Business Anywhere got launched. And what we do, we are a registered agent and company formation service. We do company formation and registered agents in all 50 states in the U.S. We also do remote online notary. We do company compliance and we have a virtual mailbox product. For any of you looking for a mailing address in the U.S., the virtual mailbox is kind of a must-have thing for expats and permanent travelers. So I know, I had to get one a long time ago when I moved out of the U.S. and it became kind of a necessary tool. So that’s what we do.

07:57
Robert Chadwick
Awesome. So I will start your slides and then when you want to move to the next, just let me know and we’ll go from there.

08:35
Bobby Casey
Yeah, that’s the first slide. I guess that’s really just an intro slide. So anyway, today we’re going to be talking about forming an LLC for your U.S. real estate investments. As I said a little bit in the intro, this should be important for you if you are a U.S. citizen or U.S. person for tax purposes, like a green card holder, but living abroad as an expat or living a kind of digital nomad life. It should also be really relevant for you if you are a non-US person investing in the U.S. and needing structures for that. I don’t want to go into too much detail on real estate, but I am also a real estate investor and I was raised in a construction and investing household. I started buying my first properties, I think when I was 20 or 21.

09:27
Bobby Casey
So I’m quite familiar with this. I’ve got thousands and thousands of clients in this space. So quite familiar with it, both from the tax consulting side and asset protection planning, and also now from the company structuring side. So certainly you’re on this webinar because you are interested in investing in real estate. It is and can be a very lucrative opportunity. The U.S. is a place where you can get rich investing in real estate. A lot of it from the tax benefits you get and the ability to leverage capital to invest in more properties. It makes it very attractive, especially for foreign nationals who haven’t been investing in the U.S. market in the past. Like if you’re from Europe, it’s very difficult to leverage properties against properties to get loans, or at least it’s much more difficult than it is in the U.S.

10:21
Bobby Casey
It does make it a pretty lucrative opportunity if you are trying to increase your portfolio size and build your wealth in real estate. Forming a U.S. LLC does provide numerous advantages. I don’t want to get into it on this slide too much. We’re going to get into it in depth on the next slides, but we will explore the reasons why an LLC for almost everyone is the optimal structure for your U.S. real estate investments. Next slide, please. So why register an LLC to buy U.S. property? In this slide, we’re going to be talking about the legal framework, some ownership flexibility, and the credibility and professionalism of using an LLC for your real estate investments. So an LLC is a hybrid entity. in the U.S., it was first created back in the early seventies.

11:21
Bobby Casey
Wyoming was the first state to implement an LLC, and it was a hybrid structure. Basically, it’s a hybrid kind of a cross between a corporation and a partnership, which effectively gives you the best of both worlds. You get the liability protection from a corporation, while you get the simplicity and flexibility of operating a partnership. Having an LLC makes it really simple for you, with all the flexibility of how you structure ownership, how you structure management, and how you structure out payments to members and managers. And in an LLC, the owners are called members. Just for clarity, in a corporation, shareholders and an LLC, are called members. For example, you might have a managing member who may only own if you have a partnership.

12:19
Bobby Casey
You might have a managing member who may only contribute 10% to the equity of the investment. However, he or she might be getting a larger share of the profits because of their management role. Well, you have a lot of flexibility there because you can actually give in your partnership agreement and your operating agreement, you can actually choose to give them a larger share of the profits to compensate for that. So it makes it really simple to have a lot of flexibility in the structure itself. The legal framework of an LLC makes it a lot simpler than dealing with corporations. For example, if you want to add a member to the LLC, you remove a member, add a manager, and remove a manager. It’s really simple. You just do an amendment to the operating agreement.

13:10
Bobby Casey
You might have to do a membership interest assignment if you’re transferring ownership of that partnership or that LLC to another person. But it’s all paperwork that you do in the back end, nothing really needs to be filed with the secretary of state to do that. Whereas in some states, if you have a corporation, you have to record minutes on any changes you make, and oftentimes you even have to record the changes in the share structure with the secretary of state, making it much more complicated, and more costly to do that. So an LLC makes this super easy, and super flexible.

13:46
Bobby Casey
And then on the credibility and professionalism side, it’s a little bit of a, an obvious point, but if I go buy a property, let’s say I’m looking at a shopping center or an apartment building or something like that, let’s say it’s a million dollars or $2 million, and I walk into the bank and I say, “I want to borrow a property,” or “I want to borrow a million dollars to buy this property,” Me going in as Bobby has a lot less credibility than me going in as Bobby LLC. It shows an air of credibility and professionalism that banks are going to respect. It also makes it a lot easier for you to get credit lines, which in turn makes it easier for you to add leverage and more quickly grow your real estate portfolio.

14:36
Bobby Casey
To me, it just makes you much more attractive to partners, lenders, and even tenants. It just looks so much better. And we’ll get into the liability issues in a second, but that key can’t be overstated. Next slide, please. So in my opinion, this is probably the most important slide. So if you’re not taking notes, and you want to take a little bit of notes, this is the one you want to pay attention to. Having an LLC gives you tremendous asset protection benefits. So we’re going to be talking about liability, limited liability, separation assets, and risk management. I have one more slide where we’re going to be talking about risk mitigation. That’s a slightly separate topic on that slide. In this one, we’re going to stick with these three topics.

15:23
Bobby Casey
Basically, having your properties in an LLC allows you to separate the ownership of the property from your personal assets. So, for example, maybe you own some other things, like maybe you have a private business, you own maybe a house or two, an investment portfolio, your 401K, that sort of thing. And over here, you’ve got some real estate. Well, I can give you an example. I had a client come to me, I guess, three or four years ago. He owned ten rental houses in Texas. He owned them all in his own name, which, by the way, is a horrible, horrible decision. I can’t stress that enough. Never own real estate in your own name. Every single human being that walks into your property is a potential liability that walks in there and you have no control over it.

16:12
Bobby Casey
When it is a rental property, you don’t know who your tenants are going to invite over, their friends, or their family. And in this example, my client came to me to help him fix the situation, which we couldn’t fix because it had already happened. But it illustrates the point. He owned ten properties in his own name and he actually had one of his tenants. This is like a tenant’s worst nightmare. But he had one of the tenants in one of the houses actually build a meth lab in the kitchen, and they blew the house up, blew the kitchen up, and killed somebody. Terrible situation. But because he didn’t own any of his properties in an LLC, it exposed him personally to the entire liability and he ended up losing everything, because as you can see here, number two, the separation of assets.

17:04
Bobby Casey
Not only did he not own his rental house in an LLC, but he owned all of his rental houses and his personal home in his own name. And by not separating the assets, he exposed everything he owned to that litigation event. So it was a horrible risk management plan to own everything in his own name. So just to kind of flip that and give you a better idea of what he should have done. What he should have done in that scenario was he should have had one LLC for each individual property. So property one, LLC one, property two, LLC two, property three, LLC three, and so on and so forth. And in that scenario, what would have happened is, let’s say property one was the one where somebody got killed.

17:54
Bobby Casey
Property one would have been, all the liability would have been limited to the assets of Property one because the owner’s family would have sued the owner of Property one, which would have been LLC one, and then LLC one’s assets would have been at risk. He certainly would lose that property. But properties two through nine, plus his personal residence and other assets, would have been completely separated. So he would have completely segregated those assets and limited its liability. So it is a huge thing you absolutely have to own. I mean, if you’re a serious real estate investor, you’re crazy to buy property in your own name. Let’s move forward to the next slide because I get into this a bit deeper in the risk management slate.

18:44
Bobby Casey
So I’m going to briefly hit on tax benefits, as I understood from our previous conversation before the presentation began, you’re going to have a pretty good presentation next week on tax benefits for real estate investment in the U.S. So I’m not going to hit too deep on this because you’re going to have that webinar next week that’s going to go into much more depth on that topic. But I just want to hit on these. We’re just going to scratch the surface and hit on the high spot so you understand how LLCs work, an LLC by default. Now, you can choose a different tax election, but for real estate, you really want the default tax status of an LLC, and that is pass-through. So if you’re a single-member LLC, that LLC is treated as a disregarded entity for tax purposes.

19:35
Bobby Casey
And if, as you earn income from that LLC, that income will be on the schedule C of your personal tax return. So if you’re a us person for tax purposes, you’re going to file a 1040 and you’ll have a Schedule C to reflect the income or loss. If you had a tax loss on there, it’ll be on the schedule C of your tax return. If you are a non-U.S. person, then you’re going to file a 1040 NR. NR stands for non-resident and it’ll be on the schedule C of your 1040 NR. But it passes directly through to your tax. So an LLC in this regard is tax-neutral. You don’t get any direct tax benefits from owning a property in an LLC.

20:16
Bobby Casey
You don’t avoid certain taxes in certain ways because they pass through to you and the taxation is based on your personal situation. And as an owner of a property, let’s say you own a, I don’t know, a 50-unit apartment building or some rental houses in Kansas or something like that, the taxation is going to be based on your personal tax situation, and the location of those properties. So, passing through taxation is ideal because some people think, okay, maybe I should put my properties in a corporation. Well, that’s not really ideal. Number one is a C corporation, which is the default status of a corporation. A C corporation is taxed at the federal level and at the state level. If there’s a state corporate tax, currently the federal corporate tax rate is 21%.

21:07
Bobby Casey
And then state tax ranges anywhere from zero up to, I think the highest now in the U.S. is around 14%. So you would have a state tax on the income of your property, and then if you paid yourself a dividend, you personally would have dividend tax on that. So you can end up with double taxation through a corporation, which is not ideal. And then some people also think they should do an S corp, which technically there is no such entity as an S corp. There is a corporation with an S tax election when you file IRS form 2553 to elect a different tax status. But generally, that’s not what you want in real estate. It is because then you end up having to get the tax advantages you have to pay a salary and that sort of thing.

21:50
Robert Chadwick
So let’s stick with LLC’s default tax election. Whether you are an individual and it passes through to your schedule C or you are a partnership. So if you have two or more partners or members in the LLC, then you file a 1065 partnership return and then each partner issued a K-1 to reflect that profit or loss deductions and depreciations. Again, I’m sure your webinar next week is going to go into a lot of depth on the deductions, and I’m sure they will discuss also accelerated depreciation schedules to cut your profit, especially in the first few years, the only thing I’ll mention about taking these deductions through an LLC.

22:35
Bobby Casey
One benefit of having it through an LLC is you can be considered a real estate professional now that it’s run through a company and you do get maximum advantage of taking these deductions, whereas owning property individually unless you can prove you are an actual real estate professional, you have limitations on some of the deductions you can take and then state-specific tax advantages. There could be incentives and benefits depending on where you’re investing in the property, and so there could be some advantages there depending on where you register the LLC. We’re going to get into mitigating litigation risk with an LLC. I have a couple of really key points we want to talk about on this slide.

23:24
Bobby Casey
So starting out with legal safeguards, we talked a little bit about this with just having the liability protection or that umbrella, so to speak, of having your properties held in an LLC, keeping it away from you. But there are also some additional legal safeguards. For example, generally speaking for property ownership, we recommend Wyoming LLCs because they have some very clear statutes that do a great job of protecting the assets of single-member LLCs particularly. I don’t want to get into too much detail. We could do an entire presentation exactly on that one topic. But if you want to look this up, just Google search charging order protection Wyoming and there are unlimited blogs. We probably have a blog on our website about that as well. But there are unlimited blogs where you can read about charging order protection in Wyoming particularly.

24:21
Bobby Casey
But it’s safe to say there’s actually only one other state that has the same level of legal safeguards as Wyoming for single-member LLCs. One other quick note I will mention, because a lot of people seem to think Florida LLCs are really ideal structures here as well, especially non-people. For whatever reason, Florida seems to be. I don’t know, maybe somebody wrote some blogs about Florida being great. I want to make a quick point. If you are doing a single-member LLC for investing in real estate, I highly encourage you to not use Florida LLCs because Florida has a lot of case history with single-member LLCs. They will bypass the entity itself. Like if you personally get sued, they can actually take the assets within the LLC to satisfy a judgment. So Wyoming, you can’t do that. Florida, you can.

25:19
Robert Chadwick
Florida, if you have multiple members, two or more members, no problem with Florida. But for single-member LLCs, I generally avoid Florida insurance considerations. I get a lot of pushback on the asset protection benefits of LLCs because people say, well, Bobby, why don’t you just have liability insurance to cover everything, and then you don’t really have to worry about all these entity structures and complex planning and risk mitigation and all that. Well, my answer to that is, go read an insurance contract and go read the fine print. And when you read the hundreds of loopholes in there, you’ll realize that an insurance adjuster’s entire job is to not pay out on your claim.

26:06
Bobby Casey
That is literally their job is to find a loophole in the fine print of an insurance contract and rewrite those contracts for future use to create loopholes that give them ways of not paying on your claim. So the example I gave earlier with the guy that had ten properties in Texas, they did not pay out on his claim because selling meth from a residential property is an illegal activity, and they had a loophole in there that said they do not cover risks associated with illegal activity in the property. Of course, like most of us, we don’t read line by line on these contracts and we just think, oh, well, I’ll just make the claim and it’ll be fine. I’m just saying it’s not a great idea to rest solely on your insurance to protect you from any litigation risk.

26:58
Bobby Casey
Having that LLC in place that shields you and your personal assets and also shields that property from your other properties is a tremendous benefit. And I look at it a little bit also like an insurance policy, because, I mean, you’re going to pay every year to maintain it, but it’s going to be cheaper than a liability insurance policy that’s going to cover you for a wrongful death case. And lastly, on this risk mitigation slide, we’ll discuss the operating agreement. For those of you not familiar, an operating agreement, kind of in layman’s terms, is effectively, it’s the contract between you and your own business. It basically spells out the guidelines, how to make decisions when you make certain decisions, and how to deal with disputes.

27:50
Bobby Casey
It also deals with how to prevent conflicts between members, what management roles are, what members’ roles are, and what happens if members have a personal lawsuit and you have a creditor coming after a member’s interest in an LLC. So having a properly drafted operating agreement with asset protection in mind is critically important, especially if you’re holding valuable assets in that entity. Next slide, please, sir. And this will be our last slide here before my contact information. So I’m wrapping this up. So optimizing the structure of your real estate investments. We’ll be discussing strategic planning, multi-entity strategy, and professional guidance here. And this kind of, it all kind of goes together here, but effectively, I’ll just give you some ideas. I briefly hit on it before, but if you’re buying properties, generally speaking, you want to have one property, one LLC.

28:52
Bobby Casey
Now, I get some pushback here from people maybe somebody’s buying low-value houses for $50,000 apiece in the middle of nowhere Kentucky. I get it. Spending all that money on an LLC and maintaining it every year for one low-value property that rents for, let’s say, $500 a month starts to get a bit tedious. If you are in that scenario where you’re buying lower-value properties, from a liability standpoint, you should always have one property, one LLC. But from a cost savings standpoint, you could maybe group them together, two, maybe three properties into one LLC just for a cost savings. But again, just understand, that if you have three rental houses in one LLC and you have a litigation event with one of those properties, you have now exposed all three of those properties to that liability.

29:50
Bobby Casey
And if you are hit with a judgment, they can come after all three of those properties. Now, if you had 30 properties and ten LLCs, you have now segregated that risk and separated those three from the other 27 properties. So it’s still an effective strategy, but just for cost minimization, if you’re in low-value properties like that, maybe you want to consider that. So that’s one strategy to consider. Another thing to consider is a lot of people say, won’t it be, so complicated? If I’ve got ten properties with ten LLCs, I file my taxes, and I’ve got ten items on my schedule C. It’s just so much.

30:29
Bobby Casey
One thing you can do to kind of minimize that is you create one LLC as your hold company, and then the hold company will be the owner or the sole member of the LLC, one LLC, two LLCs, or three down the line. That way all the income or loss, if you’re, if you have a tax loss, all of it flows through to Holdco, and then you only have the income or loss from Holdco ending up on your personal income tax return. So it does simplify that a little bit. Yes, you do add one additional entity there. But some people like having the holding company in place because it also allows them to more freely move money across properties so they can move money up. Let’s say you sell property five.

31:19
Bobby Casey
So property five sells, the funds flow up to LLC five, and then you flow the money up to the hold company, and then the hold company can redeploy that and invest it into a new property. So that is one strategy if you have multiple properties. Another strategy. Let me hit on this topic real quick. I briefly hit on it before. I generally recommend anytime you’re holding resident or any real estate, I’m sorry if you’re owning real estate, to own it in a Wyoming LLC, again, you can do other LLCs. I have no skin in the game. I couldn’t care less which state you pick. But generally speaking, Wyoming has better statutes for asset protection and a very long history. They are the first state that creates LLCs and is very pro-business friendly.

32:07
Bobby Casey
So they have a lot of history and statutes protecting the assets in an LLC. Now, a lot of pushback I do get. So if you go talk to your CPA or maybe your local business attorney or your local family attorney, they might say, look, for example, let’s say you live in South Carolina and they might tell you, well, sorry, but you need to register your LLC in South Carolina. That is not true unless the business operates in South Carolina. And what I mean by that, is if you just own, let’s say you just own an apartment building, that prop, that building can be owned by an LLC literally in any state, Wyoming or otherwise. Any other state, actually any other country. We could register a BVI company for you to own that property in South Carolina if you wanted.

33:00
Bobby Casey
It doesn’t matter the ownership of it. What matters is the operational activity in the state. So an example of this would be if you owned an apartment building, let’s say you own a large apartment building with 500 units, and with that, of course, you’re going to have some operating activity. You’re going to have on-site property management. You’re going to have a handyman or more than one grounds maintenance, plumbers, all this stuff. You’re going to have employees to manage that property. Well, if you have employees, you end up having what’s called nexus in that state. So you will need to be registered in the state where those employees live. However, the strategy I would employ would be to own the property itself in a Wyoming LLC.

33:46
Bobby Casey
And in this scenario, just as an example, then I would register a South Carolina LLC to serve as the property management business. And that’s the company that hires your property management, your groundskeepers, and so on and so forth. So that would be the strategy I would employ. And the same could be said if you own, let’s say 20 rental houses and you decided to manage your own properties I would create an in-state LLC for the property management function, but I would have each of those properties owned by a Wyoming LLC. I hope that’s clear. And then professional guidance. You always want to get professional guidance from your real estate attorneys, your CPAs, investment advisors, that sort of thing. It is important for your structure. So with that, I am done.

34:32
Bobby Casey
You can hit the next slide, which is just my contact details, actually. It’s just kind of our advertisement, I guess. But just quickly, I mentioned in the intro, that we do company formation in all 50 states. Registered agent service, virtual mailbox. We do all of your company compliance. We are the only registered agent and company formation service out there that automates your annual report filings every year. As long as you’re a client in good standing with us, your things get filed automatically every year. I don’t know if any of you’ve had LLCs before, where you’ve gotten the notice and missed it or the email went into your spam or whatever, and then you realize three months later your LLC is in default status and you have late fees and reinstatement fees and that sort of thing.

35:20
Bobby Casey
So that doesn’t happen with us because it’s automated. So if you need any help with that sort of thing, let us know. And then I guess that’s my advertisement slide. My next slide, Robert. If you can hit. It’s just our contact details, so let me know if we can help you guys.

35:42
Robert Chadwick
Bobby, super interesting stuff, and I’ll say, as a. As a real estate investor myself, I honestly was not aware that you could have an LLC in a separate state from where the property is owned.

35:57
Bobby Casey
almost nobody knows that, to be honest. Most people get really bad advice on that. They go to their local business attorney or their local CPA. And because that lawyer, we’ll use South Carolina as an example, because that lawyer is in South Carolina, that’s what he knows. So, lawyers, and CPAs, are the most conservative people on the planet, and they. They give the narrowest advice they can with the only. The things they know. And so that’s why you get that type of advice from a CPA in South Carolina or a lawyer in South Carolina, but that’s not accurate. It’s only about where the operational activity happens, and almost nobody understands that.

36:39
Robert Chadwick
Yeah, I mean, I’ll personally say I did not understand it as well. And I’ve been doing real estate for 20-plus years. One more question. What’s the cost to establish an LLC?

36:53
Bobby Casey
So we have various options on our website. It depends on what you need to do. I mean, the basic fee, we charge is $37 plus the state fee to register an LLC, the state fee in whatever that state is. But then there are various options on top of that. If you want us to do certain things, do you want us to do your EIN application and file your ss four? Do you want us to file your 2553? Do you want us to draft a custom operating agreement for you? And so on and so forth. So it can range anywhere from 37 plus estate fees up to a few hundred bucks, I think. And it depends on the state because some states have really expensive fees too. Like Delaware is quite expensive, California is quite expensive. So it depends on the state fees a lot.

37:46
Robert Chadwick
So you had brought up something as well, the EIN number. Obviously, there are a lot of people who will establish an LLC for the purpose of purchasing a property, but they have to wait for that EIN number to be established. Is there any way to speed that along or how long does that take? Do you have any insight on this? I know you’re dealing with the IRS, but it’d be good professional advice on it.

38:15
Bobby Casey
This is probably the sorest spot in our company, EIN applications for non-U.S. people. If you’re a U.S. person and you have a Social Security number, we can get your EIN. Unless there’s an issue, which rarely there is, but occasionally it happens. But if you have a Social Security number, we usually get in numbers the same day or the next day. It’s usually quite fast. If you are a non-U.S. person and do not have a Social Security number, it is an extremely tedious process. I can tell you, unless you’ve done a thousand of these things, it is not something you want to do yourself because it’s a paper form that you have to do, and you have to either mail it in or fax it to the IRS. There are multiple things on that form that you can answer incorrectly.

39:05
Bobby Casey
And the worst thing is if you miss a checkbox or you don’t answer the right thing in the right box in the right way, and then you fax it over to the IRS, they won’t answer you. They just, won’t do anything about it. And you might think, okay, I’ve got to wait four weeks for this EIN to come back to me, but you will literally never hear from the IRS. They’re never going to respond to you and tell you made a mistake on the form. They just see the mistake and they’re like, it’s wrong. They throw it away. It is the wildest thing ever. I bet in all the years I’ve been doing this, I think maybe we’ve gotten a letter back from the IRS less than ten times telling us there was a mistake.

39:51
Bobby Casey
And to refile it less than ten times, I can tell you that is a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the SS board forms we filed. So right now, generally speaking, it’s taking us about two weeks to get the EIN letter back from the IRS. It can take up to twelve weeks. I can also tell you, be very glad you are not doing this. A couple of years ago, let’s call it peak COVID, because during that time, basically, they closed the office for about six months and did EIN applications. And by close it, I mean they literally sent everybody home and nobody worked for six months. And so it did not happen for non-U.S. people. It didn’t happen for six months.

40:40
Bobby Casey
And when they came back to work, they had such a backlog, it took six to eight months to get one done back then. This is back in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, it started getting a little bit better and then progressively it’s gotten a little bit better. Now we’re down to, on average, two to three weeks to get them back. So if you’re a non-U.S. person creating an LLC, and you know you need that in, plan ahead as much as you can. Generally speaking, if you know you’ve got a deal to be made and you’re making, you’re purchasing the property, you don’t necessarily need the EIN to make the deal. You need the EIN to open the bank account to eventually get paid money into your account. But you can do that as you progress.

41:28
Bobby Casey
I wouldn’t throw a deal away just because I’m waiting on my EIN, I would basically just ask or figure out other ways or take checks or something like that and just hold the money in that way until the EIN is issued. Because you can’t open a bank account without an EIN in the us. And for those listening that don’t know, EIN stands for employer identification number. That is the tax ID number for your LLC.

41:55
Robert Chadwick
Actually. I’ll say if you can get these within two to three weeks, that’s fantastic. So certainly it’s not.

42:03
Bobby Casey
Yeah, it’s not always like that. I mean, we’ve literally done this. It’s crazy. For example, we might send in ten or 15SS, 4S, or EIN applications in one day, and at the same time in the same facts, right? And then we’ll get one of them back a week later, we’ll get one back two weeks later, we’ll get three more back two and a half weeks later, we’ll get a couple more back in four weeks. I’m talking about the same batch. We send them in the same batch and they never come back at the same timeframe, which is wild to me because I know with the IRS, the way their faxing system works, it’s kind of like a support ticket.

42:45
Bobby Casey
When they receive a fax in that one fax, it creates a support ticket for an IRS agent that deals with that issue. But that one ticket goes to one agent. So that one fax comes in, let’s say with twelve applications in it goes to one person. But why that one person doesn’t do all twelve of them at one time?

43:11
Robert Chadwick
Yeah, government efficiency, right?

43:13
Bobby Casey
Yeah. We actually got a bad review on Trustpilot or Google or something like that. We got a bad review because it took the guy eight weeks to get his EIN back and he thought it was us. He wrote us a scathing with everything that happened on our end in perfect timing, but the EIN took eight weeks to get back and he wrote us a really one-star scathing review. You know, as if we can control what the IRS does. But whatever, it’s the nature of the business. It doesn’t always go perfectly.

43:47
Robert Chadwick
Okay, so I will start my presentation now. And then after the presentation, I’m sure everybody has a lot of questions for Bobby as well as I do. And then if you could, I can see there are already 17 questions in the Q and A, but you can start loading your questions up and we’ll hit them as we go. So with that, I shall start. Okay, so as everybody is aware, we are a global mortgage provider. We focus primarily on providing U.S. mortgages to foreign nationals and expats. We are by far the industry leader in this. And because 100% of our clients are either foreign nationals or U.S. expats, I honestly feel, and I’ve been doing this for a very long time, that nobody does this type of lending better. So before I start in the chat, you’ll see a link to arrange an appointment or a time with either one of our loan officers. Our loan officers, as we’ll go through the slides, are based all over the world and speak a variety of languages. You can click on it and you can schedule an appointment.

45:20
Robert Chadwick
There’s also a link if you’d like to schedule an appointment with Bobby and his team and discuss how you can benefit from an LLC. So, in the general overview of our U.S. mortgages, no U.S. credit is required. I know a lot of people have this idea, especially if you’re an international investor and maybe you’re investing in the UK. Or even Australia, a lot of times they want you to have some exposure in those countries. In the U.S., there is no requirement. It’s fantastic if you have a credit report from your home country, but we’re also aware that there are some countries that do not have a credit reporting agency and that is something that we can work around as well. We do a lot of work with private banks and private banks, as most of you are aware.

46:12
Robert Chadwick
Normally, they’re able to give you a U.S. mortgage, which is very rare in general, but they will require you to put up AUM or assets under management. All of the loans that we offer are considered dry funding, meaning there is no requirement to open up a bank account with that particular lender or that finance company that we work with or even ourselves. We are a direct lender in the U.S. foreign income is allowed. So if you’re earning your money in euros or whatever it may be, that is not an issue with us. We have loan programs in all 50 states. If you’re a foreign national, you can get up to 75% loan to value. If you are a U.S. expat, you can get up to 80% loan to value and that’s on a purchase.

47:10
Robert Chadwick
If you are looking to refinance, then it’s just reduced slightly to 70%. We have a very simple process and we have a really fantastic platform that allows you to take the application and securely upload all your documents. Normally, once we receive everything, give us about 72 hours to issue you a pre-approval. Or if you have the complete package, say it’s either refinance or if you have a purchase agreement. It takes us about 72 hours to get an actual conditional loan approval, which if you’re familiar with U.S. lending, is lightning fast. Normal closing times are 30 to 45 days, which is very standard in the U.S. We factor in the extra time depending on where you’re located. But normally we can do a transaction very quickly.

48:09
Robert Chadwick
One of the fantastic things about America Mortgages is because we only focus on foreign nationals and expats, you can sign your loan documents in the country where you are located. There is no need or no reason unless you know, you particularly want to pick up the keys for your house to travel to the U.S. And there’s a variety of ways to sign, whether it’s on a video call or going to the embassy. It really just depends on what works best for you. And in most countries, as soon as we start talking to you, we’re already aware of how you will sign your closing documents. Our loans are available for purchase, refinance, and cash-out or equity release. So anything that you want to do, real estate related, we certainly can do it.

49:01
Robert Chadwick
And this goes for both residential all the way up to commercial. One thing that is very unique for the U.S. is there is no discrimination when it comes to age of the borrower to obtain a mortgage. This means that whether you’re 19 or 99, you are still able to obtain the longest amortization period available. So if you’re 19 or 99, you still have a 30-year fixed mortgage. There’s no discrimination against it. So it’s an amazing way, especially if you’re a global real estate investor, to be able to maximize your yield with the longest amortization possible. In order to help you maximize your yield, we actually have a program that is a ten-year fixed interest only. And then after that ten-year period, you would expect that loan to readjust to whatever the prevailing rate is at that time.

50:04
Robert Chadwick
However, that loan rate stays at the same rate. But now you’re just paying principal and interest. So you have a total of a 40-year tenure. If you want to be able to get maximum yield, that’s the loan that you want to go for. A lot of our loans are based on common sense underwriting. And I’ll go through this as we go through the loan programs. But we can qualify for a loan based on the rental income of the property. And if you think about it absolutely makes sense because if you’re going to buy a building, for example, you’re certainly not going to qualify on your personal income. You’re going to qualify on the cash flow of the property. And that’s how we look at the individual rental properties. We qualify them on the cash flow of the property.

50:54
Robert Chadwick
It just makes sense. 97% of our loan applications are approved, something we are very proud of. And we have loan officers in twelve different countries working 24/7 so regardless of where you are in the world, you do not have to stay up at three in the morning to talk to some loan officer in New York. You are working in your time zone and often speaking your language. So I’ll go over our loan programs quite quickly, and if there are questions, you can drop them into the chat and then we can go forward from there. So this is by far our most popular loan program. This is called the AM rental coverage plus. With this, there is no personal income required, meaning you do not have to provide your tax returns, your end-of-year statement, etcetera.

51:49
Robert Chadwick
Because we’re doing loans across the world, from Shanghai to Sydney to anywhere, if we had to go through tax returns, it would be an administrative and an underwriting nightmare. So what we do is, as I explained earlier, we qualify the property or the borrower on the income generated from the property. And if you look at the bottom, you can see an example of this. So, as an example, if the income is $2,400 and how we get that amount, or that number is when we order the appraisal or the valuation, we request an appraisal evaluation on the rent, and that number is the number that is used to qualify for the loan. So when we say the mortgage payment, we’re talking about the total mortgage payment, which is the taxes, the insurance, and then the mortgage payment.

52:51
Robert Chadwick
Sometimes we can adjust it based on a principal and interest, or sometimes it can be an interest only. But those three things together make up your mortgage payment, and as long as the rent covers that, then the loan qualifies. And just as an example, if the rent does not cover the full amount, it does not mean that the loan is not approved. All it means is the LTV will be reduced slightly. So it’s a fantastic way to do it. We can go down this, we need to adjust this slide because we had just lowered our loan amount to $100,000 with a 75% loan to value. What that means, is Bobby had sort of talked about this a little bit earlier. Literally, anybody can build a portfolio in the U.S. by far, it is absolutely the best way to create wealth.

53:44
Robert Chadwick
30-year fixed. Again, regardless of age and interest only programs are available. This is a very popular loan program, especially if you have students, have children who are going to school abroad in the U.S. A lot of times, or previously, up until this program, you would have to qualify based on your income, your personal income, and you would have to be able to service your debt in your home country, as well as servicing the debt in the U.S. where your child was living, and you would purchase the property as a second home often, especially if maybe you were self-employed and you’re not showing your true debt serviceability, it was difficult. So this program allows you to qualify, just as our rental coverage loan qualifies.

54:35
Robert Chadwick
So you qualify on the rental income of the property, even though your child will be attending university and living in that property while going to school. It’s a fantastic way to do it. And if the child is 18, which is most likely the case, we can add them onto the loan, which will help them build some U.S. credit. The AM investor plus. For example, the rents do not cover the mortgage payment for whatever reason. Maybe you’re buying something that you’re expecting, some real capital appreciation, or maybe it’s a place that you’ve always wanted to buy a property. There could be a variety of reasons. In the event that, say, the rent doesn’t qualify, again, it doesn’t mean that you cannot get the loan. We have a loan program that will qualify on your personal income.

55:33
Robert Chadwick
And again, because we’re doing loans around the world, we realize if were to take tax returns, it would be unreasonable. So how we qualify, and we have a template for this, is you will qualify on two years of income in your current year to date in a letter. And that letter, if you’re self-employed, will be from your accountant. If you’re employed, it’s going to be from your employer. Very simple, very easy to get, and it works exactly the same as providing all of your income. And I know most of you are probably watching this and thinking, why don’t they have this where I live? And I think you will find that this is absolutely the easiest and the simplest type of mortgage to get.

56:19
Robert Chadwick
Again, you qualify for a loan amount as low as $100,000. 30-year fixed interest only up to 75% financing foreigners. How this works, if you look at the bottom, we would take whatever is listed in your letter, your gross personal income, and we need to have that at least at a 43% debt-to-income ratio. The debt-to-income ratio is calculated only on the debt in the U.S. So if you’re a global investor, most likely you will have only the mortgage for the property. If you are a U.S. expat and say you’ve gone to one of the big banks, you get halfway through the process, and then they say, oh you’re earning your dollars in euros or pounds or whatever it may be. I’m sorry, we can’t help you.

57:17
Robert Chadwick
We probably get one-third of our business this way. They’re going almost through the transaction. They get to the third week, and then this comes out, and then they come to us and scramble. What we try to do as a U.S. expat is make the loan process just like you were living and working in the U.S., except you do not need a W-2, and foreign income is absolutely allowed. So you would qualify just as you were living and working in the U.S. and walking into a local bank. Certainly, you still need to maintain your credit and have a good credit score. And again, loan amounts on this particular loan program are at $150,000 up.

58:04
Robert Chadwick
If you look at how this qualifies, we take your two years of tax returns and debt in the U.S., and we again have to come to at least a 43% debt-to-income ratio. So, with high net-worth clients, we deal a lot globally with private banks. We realize that a lot of high-net-worth individuals have very complicated tax returns, multiple jurisdictions, and various businesses, maybe they don’t show exactly what they can service in debt. So we have a program that qualifies them on their assets, their liquid assets, not their hard assets. So if it’s like cash, it could be even crypto bonds, stocks, these types of things. We will take two months of these statements, and we will use the average of that based on the fixed portion of the loan.

59:05
Robert Chadwick
And if you look below, this is a very easy way to explain this. So, if you take a portfolio of, say, $5 million and the fixed period of the loan, even though amortized over 30, the fixed period is, say, for five years. So we’ll divide that $5 million over 60 months, which is five years, and we’ll come up with an average income, and that would be used to qualify. So, as you can see, in this case, it’s not a very large portfolio, but it’s significant, and it gives the client or the borrower $80,000 or a little above income to qualify for the mortgage. So that’s the entire presentation. This is our contact information. This is a scale scan code that makes it easier. Again, we have loan officers all over the world.

59:58
Robert Chadwick
There is a link in the chat where you can schedule an appointment to speak to one of our loan officers, or you can schedule an appointment to speak with Bobby Casey and his team. So with that, we will start the question and answers. Bobby, if you want to come back on we can go from here.

01:00:21
Bobby Casey
All righty. There we go.

01:00:23
Robert Chadwick
Okay. So what I’ll do is I will read the questions out and then if it’s for you, I’ll ask you to answer them. If it’s for me, then there may even be some that both of us are answering. Okay, so the first question is, can you help with opening bank accounts for an LLC?

01:00:44
Bobby Casey
Yeah, we actually do have one of our banking partners. It’s an online bank and you can actually open it right there in the platform. And they do accept foreign nationals.

01:00:56
Robert Chadwick
That’s fantastic, because I think, as you’re likely aware, foreigners setting up our bank accounts is often not an easy feat.

01:01:05
Bobby Casey
It’s not easy, it’s doable. But if you want a brick-and-mortar account like Wells Fargo or Bank of America, foreign nationals can do it. They just have to come up here in person at the bank. We have an online bank platform that they don’t have to appear in person. It’s all done and verified online.

01:01:26
Robert Chadwick
Okay. And before. Before we finished the questions, I was a little bit incorrect when I was talking about the link in the chat. The link in the chat for Bobby, you can actually set up an LLC right on that link. So I guess it’s using your platform. So fantastic. Can an LLC be owned by an offshore SPV like a BVI or a UK Co to purchase property? I’ll let you answer this and then I’ll talk about the mortgage portion of that.

01:01:56
Bobby Casey
yeah, I can’t answer from the mortgage side if it’s a viable option, but there is zero limitation on who can own a U.S. LLC. So, yes. A BVI limited company or SVC can own it. No, no problem.

01:02:14
Robert Chadwick
We actually get this question often because I believe tax advisors in home countries often want to use a tax blocker. Unfortunately, for a mortgage, the members of the LLC or members of the LLC need to be also the borrower for the property. So if there is another entity that owns the LLC, unfortunately, it does not work for a mortgage. Next question. What state is the best state for an LLC for real estate investment? I’m going to take a guess on this one, but I’m going to say Wyoming.

01:02:53
Bobby Casey
Nailed it. Yep, definitely. Definitely Wyoming.

01:02:58
Robert Chadwick
Okay. And I think. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

01:03:02
Bobby Casey
I was just going to make one comparison because I get this question a lot. Why not Delaware? Because Delaware is always a common question for llcs. And I’ll make a few comments about Delaware. In 95% of the cases, Delaware is generally not a good option. Especially in this scenario, it’s not a good option. Delaware is a good option if you’re raising money you need to go get large credit lines, or you’re dealing with large funding sources. Seven, eight, nine-figure funding sources. Because Delaware has its own court system called the Chancery court system, which deals exclusively with business disputes. And because they have that court system, it makes it more attractive to investors like VCs or large funding sources.

01:04:02
Bobby Casey
It makes it attractive to the people giving you money because if you ever default on your loan, it’s easier for them to take you to court in Delaware. So if you are one of those people who needs to raise large sums of money for your project, then yes, maybe Delaware might make sense. Otherwise, avoid Delaware because it is a hassle. They’re expensive. They take forever to get done. When we register Delaware LLCs, we only do them with expedited filings because a standard filing in Delaware takes two to four weeks. Nobody wants to wait two to four weeks for the state to do anything.

01:04:48
Bobby Casey
But that’s not exactly a clear picture of how long it takes to get a Delaware LLC created, because even though we do expedited filing, it’s done within 24 hours, assuming no problems and there are no issues with the name or whatever, happens within 24 hours. The issue is Delaware doesn’t give you those documents electronically. They mail them to you, and I don’t know how they do it, but they use the slowest process possible on earth to mail them to you. I think they use carrier pigeons or something, but it takes two to three weeks before we get that document in our hands and upload it into your dashboard so that you have your documents. So even though it’s technically formed in one day, you can’t do anything with it for two to three weeks because you can’t do anything without your filing documents. And also, Delaware is expensive. If you are even one day late on renewing your entity and filing your annual report, it’s a $200 fine. Like, there are all kinds of problems with Delaware. So I avoid Delaware unless you are going after those larger funding sources or investors.

01:05:58
Robert Chadwick
Super interesting. Okay, next question. In my very recent experience, lenders do not want to provide HELOCs on properties owned by LLCs I had to transfer into my personal name. Any suggestions on how to secure Heloc with an LLC? Unfortunately, we do not provide HELOC loans for our clients, so I wouldn’t be able to answer that. Bobby, I don’t know if you have any feedback on tax or legal basis.

01:06:35
Bobby Casey
I’m not a professional in the lender lending business. I can tell you I’ve seen lenders that do HELOCs on commercial property. Well, they call it a commercial loan because it’s in an LLC’s name. I mean, it could be a single-family home in an LLC, but they consider it a commercial loan. I have seen lenders that do that, so it is possible, but that’s not my area of expertise. I couldn’t even tell you the name of a lender that does that, but I’ve seen it.

01:07:03
Robert Chadwick
Okay, perfect. Can a non-U.S. resident register an LLC in the U.S.? Do I need to visit the U.S. to do that?

01:07:12
Bobby Casey
Yes and no. anybody from a non-sanctioned country can register an LLC in the U.S. That is a very small list of sanctioned countries where we cannot register a company for you. For example, right now, Russia is a sanctioned country, but we can still register LLCs for Russians if they have a residential address outside of Russia. So we register LLCs for Russians all the time who live in places like Dubai Singapore or Thailand or there are tons of Russians, in Turkey that live there, and as long as they have an address outside of Russia, no problem. So it’s not necessarily about the person itself in that scenario. It’s about where they live. So there’s really no issue and there’s no need to appear in person. Everything’s done electronically. You mentioned we have our link.

01:08:10
Bobby Casey
I guess it’s up in the chat or on your site. I’m not exactly sure where it is, but anybody literally can go through that process and fill in the blanks it takes. Like, even if you went through and watched all of our videos and did every single step and watched every single video in our process, it might take you 20 minutes to register your company.

01:08:33
Robert Chadwick
So can I own multiple properties in an LLC? In one LLC? I believe we talked about that a little bit.

01:08:39
Bobby Casey
The answer is yes, you can. It’s just really not a good idea. As we discussed in the slide, you’re just. You’re just aggregating that risk under one LLC and exposing everything to one litigation event right there.

01:08:55
Robert Chadwick
Okay. Any complications on transferring individual ownership to an LLC, for instance, with an existing mortgage. So for the mortgage, it shouldn’t be an issue. But I mean, I don’t know if it is with an LLC being an issue.

01:09:15
Bobby Casey
You mean if I understand the question correctly, it’s as if I own a property deeded into my name, can I transfer that property into an LLC?

01:09:24
Robert Chadwick
That seems to be what the question is, yeah.

01:09:26
Bobby Casey
Okay. So from a legal standpoint, no problem at all. You just go file a quick claim deed and indeed the property over into, from your name into the LLC’s name. Super easy to do. We drafted quick claim deeds for people all the time. For people that don’t know the difference, a general warranty deed, and a quick claim deed are different things. For example, if I’m buying a house from Robert, I don’t want to do a quick claim deed because I want to make sure the title research was done and there are no unforeseen liabilities on there. So I wouldn’t do a quit claim deed because that kind of foregoes that process. I would want to buy it using a general warranty deed.

01:10:08
Bobby Casey
But if I’m transferring it from my name to an LLC that I own, a quick claim deed is cheap and easy to do, and I’m not concerned about any other liabilities on the property because it went from me to me. So I would just file a quick claim deed. With that said, I can’t answer about your mortgage company. Some mortgage companies have what’s called due-on-sale clauses, where if you change ownership of the property from your name into a company, they might restrict that. You’d have to look at your mortgage lender to see if they had due-on-sale clauses. Even the lenders I’ve seen that had due on sale clauses generally don’t really care anyway as long as you keep paying your mortgage, because all they really care about is they get their mortgage payment.

01:10:57
Bobby Casey
They already have the first position, or I guess technically second, behind your property tax. But other than that, they generally have the first position on your property anyway. And they have a personal guarantee from you, so they don’t really care who owns it at that point. But you might want to look at, if you’re with a different lender, you might want to look to see if there’s a due on sale clause in your mortgage contract.

01:11:19
Robert Chadwick
Okay, next question. Do you need to buy a property in the same state your LLC is registered in, or are there advantages to doing so? So I think this is something that we talked about even before the presentation. But if you want touch on it quickly again.

01:11:36
Bobby Casey
Basically, as I mentioned before, generally speaking, for properties, because you have a significant asset and the protections of a Wyoming LLC, I generally recommend, owning real estate to have that property in a Wyoming LLC. You can absolutely own property in a different state in a Wyoming LLC, no problem. We do it all the time. I’ve personally done it with dozens of properties where I’ve owned properties in different states. In a Wyoming LLC. I just did one in California the other day, like two weeks ago. Zero problem whatsoever. Again, the issue is, do you have operational activity in that business? Meaning do you have an office or employees and that sort of thing? Because if you have employees, you need a state tax ID number in that state.

01:12:26
Bobby Casey
You need a company registered to do business in that state because you gotta withhold payroll tax on them, and you basically need to do it. And that’s the whole point of segregating that asset. A little bit off-topic, but still kind of sort of in this topic, I also recommend holding basically any of your valuable assets in an LLC. Like, personally, I own my investment portfolio in an LLC. I don’t even have a brokerage account in my own name. I would never hold any valuable asset in my own name. I don’t even own cars in my own name.

01:13:03
Robert Chadwick
Interesting. So, okay, next question. If I have one building with four units, should I create four separate LLCs?

01:13:14
Bobby Casey
So I guess that depends on what you mean by four units. Is this like, so I, since we can’t go back and forth with the person asking the query, if it’s an apartment, like a fourplex with four units in one deeded property, then you would do one LLC to own that one deeded property. But if you’re talking about you on a condo building that has four separate deeded units, then I would probably, if you can, and if they’re valuable enough, I would put each one in a separate LLC. I hope that’s clear.

01:13:52
Robert Chadwick
Okay, good. If you already created an LLC in a different state, can you switch it to Wyoming?

01:13:59
Bobby Casey
Yeah. You can domesticate an LLC in Wyoming. It’s. It cost a little bit more. Like, we do this fairly often, but it costs a little bit more. By the way, we do this fairly often, but it’s not on our website. You would have to send us an email for that. It costs a little bit more because we have to contact your home state. Let’s say you had a South Carolina LLC. We would have to contact the South Carolina secretary of state and get a certified copy of your articles of organization. And then there are some costs associated with that and FedEx fees, etc. So there are some additional costs to that because then we have to file the domestic articles of domestication in the state of Wyoming. So it is doable.

01:14:42
Bobby Casey
It’s a little bit of a process and takes a little bit of time. It’s not nearly as quick as just filing a new one. So you’d have to think about that. Like if it were me let’s say I had an older South Carolina LLC that’s been dormant and I haven’t used it in a long time and now I’m going to go buy a property. Honestly, it’s just easier to file a new LLC than to move that existing one unless you had maybe some credit lines or some loans out or something like that with some history associated with that LLC. If you have that then yeah, it makes sense to domesticate it and keep that LLC history.

01:15:20
Robert Chadwick
Okay, next question. Difference between a Wyoming and a Delaware LLC for owning real estate. I think you covered that a little bit.

01:15:29
Bobby Casey
I just hit that a minute ago. Delaware is generally not a good idea just because of the complications unless you’re raising large funding sources. Wyoming is much easier, much cheaper, much simpler. It’ll create less headaches for you. That’s done quicker. So when we file Wyoming LLCs, with us, you have an expedited choice, but with us, once we do the filing, it’s one day to get it done, whereas, it’s an electronic delivery, Delaware it’s one day, but then it’s a paper delivery that takes two to three weeks to show up. So I don’t really see any advantage for real estate using Delaware, like I said, other than raising large funding sources.

01:16:11
Robert Chadwick
Okay, next question. I am from the UK and I set up a California LLC which holds the property. I want to add another property. Should I set up a new LLC per property? I believe yes.

01:16:26
Bobby Casey
So first of all, I’m going to make the assumption that the property is in California because otherwise, that is just crazy to register an LLC in California. And in fact, you can have that California property owned by a Wyoming LLC. Now the one complication with California is if it is an income-producing property, you’re going to have to recognize that income and pay a California state tax return. So in that scenario, it could make your life a little easier to have that LLC registered in California. Now keep in mind, that California is an anomaly. They’re literally the only state that creates this problem. Of all 50 states, California is the only one that does that.

01:17:23
Bobby Casey
So if you have investment property in California and you’re recognizing the income in that California LLC, then it’s probably better to have the property in California. It’s expensive. You have to pay that $800 a year franchise tax plus the annual report fees and everything. But if you don’t, they’re going to hit you with some fines and penalties if you have income as that property. So anyway, it’s a complicated issue with California. If you are buying a second property, my recommendation is to create a second LLC, you could create a Wyoming LLC to own the property if you want. But if you’re recognizing direct income in the property that’s located in California, you probably want to do a California LLC.

01:18:13
Bobby Casey
I will add one caveat to that if you are interested in privacy because I didn’t even discuss privacy in the presentation, but a lot of people are interested in that. In some states, like Wyoming and a few others, Delaware is another one. You can register an LLC without disclosing the members’ or managers’ names to the secretary of state, meaning your personal information is nowhere in the public record. If you do it correctly. Let me clarify. If you know what you’re doing and it’s done correctly, your information is nowhere in public record. So what we just did actually with another client two weeks ago is we created a Wyoming LLC to buy the property in California because she did not want her name on public record in California as owning that property.

01:19:03
Bobby Casey
If we registered a California LLC, her name would be on public record because you can’t file an LLC in California without giving a human’s name associated with the entity. So what we did is we created a Wyoming LLC and registered it to do business in the state of California, keeping her name out of public record. So that could be an option for you too if you are interested in privacy.

01:19:30
Robert Chadwick
Okay, next question. Can you recommend a tax advisor who can advise on how owning U.S. LLCs impact foreign tax reporting? So for us, just like with Bobby, we have partners that specialize in specific areas and we do have a partner, and coincidentally, next Thursday, the 13 June at 06:00 p.m., we will be having a webinar with him as well. So you can get some information on that. But Bobby, I’m not sure if that’s part of your LLC process, if you assist with the taxes or not.

01:20:13
Bobby Casey
I am a tax attack, an international tax lawyer, but I don’t really, I don’t do tax filings. We don’t touch any of that stuff in my consulting business. Outside of this, like with my tax consulting clients, we do advise them on structure and how to optimize for tax, but we don’t do tax filing. So even in that scenario, I would hand them off to another CPA who could deal with the structure we implemented for the client. So what I was actually going to say, is if you asked me, I would join your webinar next week.

01:20:48
Robert Chadwick
Thanks. Yeah, actually, the webinar next week, it’s another guy as interesting as yourself, but this guy just focuses on doing taxes, U.S. taxes, foreign nationals, and expats. That’s his entire business. So, yeah. So next Thursday, 06:30 p.m. Singapore time, you can sign up on the link below as well in the chat. Next question, does anyone have to file in both tax jurisdictions, place of the LLC and place of the property? For example, Wyoming LLC with a Manhattan apartment needs to file in both Wyoming and New York because of costs, obviously.

01:21:34
Bobby Casey
Was the question about filing taxes?

01:21:37
Robert Chadwick
Yeah. It’s basically the way I’m reading it is if I own a property in New York that’s owned by a Wyoming LLC, am I going to get doubly taxed? Am I going to have to file in both states tax facts?

01:21:50
Robert Chadwick
Okay. No, you would not. You would only file in New York where the property is located. So remember, an LLC is a pass-through entity. It is completely tax-neutral. The taxation is going to be based on the income generation itself. And in that scenario, if you own a Fifth Avenue property in Manhattan and you own it in a Wyoming LLC’s name, no problem owning, but your taxes will be federal in New York state there. And you wouldn’t file anything in Wyoming because you don’t have any assets in Wyoming.

01:22:24
Bobby Casey
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Well, and also Wyoming doesn’t have a state tax, so that’s, but that’s kind of a moot point because you, even if they did have a state tax, like even if you were in, even if you had an Illinois LLC that owned a New York property, you still wouldn’t file an Illinois state tax return on that property because there’s no income generation that happened in the state of Illinois.

01:22:46
Robert Chadwick
Got it. Does an LLC make the asset fall outside of the very low inheritance threshold for heirs? That’s a very good question.

01:22:59
Bobby Casey
No. Let’s say you had a million-dollar property in the LLC, and you’re the sole member of that LLC. You just, you’re the member of an LLC with a million-dollar value. It doesn’t change your asset value for estate planning purposes.

01:23:19
Robert Chadwick
One question, though, on something similar to that, say you have multiple members of the LLC and one of them passes away. How does that impact how they would look at inheritance tax? I know, might be a little bit out of the realm of your scope, but if you have any idea.

01:23:38
Bobby Casey
So I wasn’t going to mention this, but I also own a trust company, so I’m going to leave that aside. So I do know quite a bit about trust and inheritance and that sort of thing. That’s another company that we own. But basically, let’s say you had an LLC with four members. Each member owned 25%, equal members, and that LLC owned a property worth a million dollars. And member four dies. Well, first of all, you have to consider his estate plan. Did he have a living trust in place, or a will, or an asset protection trust, or something like that? You have to consider what his estate plan was. You also need to consider how your operating agreement was written in the event that you have a member die or exit.

01:24:27
Bobby Casey
I mean, that generally should be discussed, at least marginally in the operating agreement itself about what happens in the event of a member leaving the partnership. Basically, at the time of his death, you would basically have to do a property evaluation to find out the value of the property. You would have that assessment done. That person owns 25%. The property is worth a million dollars. Part of his estate would be a 25% membership interest in an LLC, with his equity being $250,000 value. So that would be factored into his estate plan, but it wouldn’t affect the partnership at all unless he didn’t have a good estate plan in place. And now you have 19 grandkids fighting over one membership interest in an LLC. So that’s an excellent reason to have an estate plan in place to avoid infighting within your family when you kick the bucket.

01:25:38
Robert Chadwick
Next question. Are there special mortgage products for non-U.S. citizens who are self-employed? Can you give me some details? For us, there are a couple of ways. Being self-employed or being employed for our mortgages really is not a factor. If you’re using the loan program, which qualifies on the rental income of the property because you don’t have to provide any personal income. If you choose to do the income letter way, then as long as your accountant can verify what your income is, we don’t really care. We don’t differentiate if somebody is employed or self-employed. Next question. Is now the right time to invest in U.S. real estate? What should we be looking for? This is an excellent question and we get this a lot.

01:26:36
Robert Chadwick
So obviously everybody knows interest rates are higher than what they were during COVID. I think still, historically they’re still reasonable. But what this has meant is there’s a huge portion of property owners that are sitting on mortgages with very low interest rates and they’re just choosing not to sell. And there’s also a variety of reasons why there’s just an inventory shortage in the U.S. So there’s this demand, but there isn’t this demand, at least in my opinion, for owner-occupied borrowers. This means that if you’re a real estate investor, most of our sophisticated real estate investors are actually jumping into the market now because they’re not competing with other buyers for the same property and not artificially driving the property price up just based on multiple people wanting the same property. So it is by far the best time to buy.

01:27:35
Robert Chadwick
I think while interest rates are high, you can always refinance, but you’re not always going to be able to get the best purchase. Casey, I don’t know if you have any add to that, but that’s what we’re telling everybody. And I think all of our sophisticated investors and seasoned investors are kind of jumping into the market now.

01:27:58
Bobby Casey
No, I wouldn’t consider myself a real estate expert or a real estate economist, so this is not my area of expertise.

01:28:07
Robert Chadwick
Okay, perfect. Currency exchange risk. Can America Mortgages help with this? Again, we try to find partners that we vet and make sure that they’re well-established and work with foreign nationals. So there is a company that’s available on our website that will help with not only moving funds over at hopefully the best FX rate, but also if you want to set up mortgage payments using their facility, you can lock in an exchange rate for quite a long period of time. So at least if there’s any fluctuation in the country that you’re in, you can be fairly consistent about what you’re paying every month. Next question. I’m not a U.S. citizen. How do I improve my creditworthiness to get better mortgage terms? Very good question. We do not require foreign borrowers to have a U.S. credit score.

01:29:15
Robert Chadwick
Our whole business is on foreign nationals and expat lending. So for us, it really wouldn’t matter if you’re a foreign national and you have us credit, there is a certain threshold that we automatically give you a credit score, which is actually quite decent credit in the U.S. What are the tax advantages foreign investors in us real estate? I know you’re not a tax advisor, Bobby, so I’ll just say from our personal experience in dealing with the partners that we have, and correct me if I’m wrong, Bobby, but I believe, especially if you’re using an LLC, you have the same tax advantages as a us citizen would have, and the same tax benefits or deductions. It’s probably one of the only countries in the world where this is available.

01:30:08
Robert Chadwick
And I think one of the things that is really important to point out, there is no buyer stamp duty like they are in most countries. I think New York and California have luxury taxes when you purchase a property. But in general, the fact that you’re not getting hit with this additional tax or stamp duty just to be able to invest in a country is one of the fantastic benefits of the U.S.

01:30:44
Bobby Casey
So tax benefits of investing in property in the U.S., the real estate tax code, let’s say, is really written in favor of incentivizing real estate investors. For example, you can do accelerated depreciation on the internal items. I’m not sure, you’re not sure if you’re familiar with this from a tax perspective, but let’s say I buy a commercial property, like an office building, for example, I can go have an assessment done, and they can itemize the things inside there, like light fixtures and doorknobs and appliances, and they can create an accelerated depreciation schedule of that. That allows me to depreciate those individual assets on a faster scale. So in the U.S., you depreciate commercial property over 39 years, residential over 27.

01:31:42
Bobby Casey
So if you had a commercial property, you would normally, let’s say you bought it for a million bucks. If you don’t do an accelerated depreciation schedule. I’m kind of simplifying here, but you would depreciate that million bucks over 39 years. But if you can go in and find $100,000 worth of appliances and equipment and fixtures and so on and so forth, that can be depreciated over five years, well, you can depreciate that $100,000 over five years. Giving you even a tax loss over those first five years, creating a huge tax benefit for you over the first five years.

01:32:19
Bobby Casey
And then what I know a lot of people do, and I’ve done this as well, is by the time you kind of burn through your accelerated depreciation schedule and you’re getting to the point where you might be tax profitable, you can do a 1031 exchange where you can basically roll the profits of the property forward to another property and basically avoid paying capital gains tax on the sale of that property. So I know a lot of people, and that’s a really good strategy for people to do every few years. And you can keep building your assets. I mean, it’s not tax-free per se, but it’s tax-deferred. You’re basically kicking the can down the road on that capital gains tax, but you can do it indefinitely.

01:33:01
Bobby Casey
And then you can kind of implement that into an estate planning strategy where if you put the property into a properly structured, irrevocable trust, then if you just keep rolling the properties forward, you can avoid any estate tax owed on the real estate portfolio itself. There are huge tax advantages to investing in our properties that really just are not available in other countries. They just don’t have the tax incentives on it like they do in the U.S.

01:33:36
Robert Chadwick
Yeah, thanks for that, Casey. And I think really, especially global investors, if they’re not in the U.S. already, people have a better bad, I guess, impression or expectation of the U.S. taxes. And it’s actually just the opposite when you look at most countries.

01:33:56
Bobby Casey
Yeah, there’s a lot of loopholes, but that also means there’s a lot of loopholes to take advantage of if you do things the right way and have the right advisors.

01:34:07
Robert Chadwick
I agree. Next question. Can I complete the entire mortgage process while abroad or do I have to go to the U.S.? Very good question. And no, you do not have to travel to the U.S. You can do everything from your home country from the initial application to closing the signing documents. Next question. Does the letter has to show the gross income or net? Good. Another good question. We go off of the gross income. So whatever the taxes are in your home country, all we care about is how much you’ve made gross for that two-year period in your current year to date. Next question. So local debt does not matter, only gross. U.S. mortgage payments, 43%. Also, what about the 10%, for example, for the Australian employers to pay on top of the gross which goes into the retirement fund?

01:35:06
Robert Chadwick
I’m familiar with the I believe it’s the superannuation fund in Australia for things like that. It really just depends on how your accountant calculates it because we’re not going off your tax returns. We’re going off either a letter from your employer or a letter from your accountant. So that letter is on the gross. I don’t believe that they would include anything that would be for future use because those funds would not be available to you today. But again, it depends on how your employer or your accountant structures a letter. Next question. What is the max loan to value foreign nationals? It is 75% for a purchase and 70% for a cash-out refi. Next question. How does the mortgage loan interest rate look for foreign nationals? I am holding a J-1 visa in the U.S. and a visiting professor.

01:36:08
Robert Chadwick
Will I be considered a U.S. expat? Very good question. So if you’re living and working in the U.S. on a proper visa and you have our credit, then certainly you should be able to qualify just as what a U.S. citizen would qualify for. If you are truly a foreign national where you’re not living and working in the U.S., the easiest way to explain it is foreign national rates are about a 1% premium to what a U.S. citizen would pay. And again, I think if you look at it over the global standard, this is actually very good pricing when it comes to foreign national loans. What is the typical mortgage rate? Well, it’s based on a lot of things. Based on the loan to value. It’s based on if you’re a U.S. citizen or a foreign national.

01:37:08
Robert Chadwick
But again, I would take whatever the us citizen rate is, it’s about 1% higher than that. What is the optimal entity structure for Canadians to own real estate in the U.S. and not be double taxed in Canada, where an LLC is seen differently than in the U.S.?

01:37:29
Bobby Casey
That is a great question. I have a lot of Canadian clients, and this is basically an exemption to the rule that we just discussed in the presentation. Canadians have a weird situation, because in Canada, the CRA, or the Canadian Revenue Authority, their version of the IRS, the CRA treats a U.S. LLC as a Canadian corporation. So if they had a U.S. LLC, they would. They would have to file it in the U.S., and then they would have to file a tax return in Canada, treating it like a Canadian corporation. So the workaround for that is I would still buy the property in a U.S. LLC.

01:38:18
Bobby Casey
I guess I should say assuming you don’t want the profit to flow back to you in Canada, you wanted to leave it in the U.S. tax-deferred to grow your wealth, which is what most of my Canadian clients that do real estate do. So that’s my framework for answering this. What I would do is I would have the property owned by the Wyoming LLC and then I would create a Wyoming C Corp as your holding company to own the Wyoming LLC. You will have corporate tax owed at the federal level because there is no corporate tax with a Wyoming C Corp. However, because of the tax benefits that I briefly mentioned and what you’ll learn more about next week with the tax expert, I guess he’s a CPA.

01:39:08
Bobby Casey
You’ll find that generally speaking, especially if you’re taking advantage of accelerated depreciation, you’re probably not going to have a tax liability anyway. Because the U.S. corporation is its own taxable entity, you as a Canadian shareholder of a us corporation, do not have to recognize the profits of that corporation. The profits stop at the corporate level there. Now if you choose to pay yourself a dividend from that corporation, you will pay Canadian tax on the dividend you distribute after yourself. But the ownership structure, in my opinion, should be a Wyoming LLC owned by a Canadian C corporation. And then if you have multiple properties, I said Canadian C Corporation. I’m sorry, Wyoming C Corporation owns Wyoming LlL. If you have multiple properties, you’d have Wyoming LLC, one LLC, two, three, four, and so on. And all of them would be owned by Wyoming C Corporation.

01:40:08
Robert Chadwick
Okay, thank you, Bobby. Next question, Is any recording available after the session? Thanks. And greetings from Singapore. Yes. So not only will all of the attendees get a recording, but it’ll probably take about a week to go through editing, but it’ll be available on various channels, on our YouTube, on our website, et cetera, and probably on Bobby’s as well. Next question. For mortgages that are qualified based on rental income, do you want to see a person as that LLC partner or more complex nested entities as supported as well? I’m not sure I understand the question 100%, but for us, a simple LLC is fine for owning the property we prefer. Actually, there are more options to do a mortgage in an LLC than there are to do as an individual. Next question. Does it matter where you have a virtual mailbox?

01:41:27
Bobby Casey
Somebody’s been on my website then. No, not really. It doesn’t make a difference with Business Anywhere. We have a couple of dozen virtual mailbox locations. People have various reasons for wanting them in different places, there could be a reason for having one in a certain location. So it could matter based on your personal situation. For example, let’s say you were a California resident and now you want to move to Thailand, or maybe you want to be a digital nomad and you want to leave California.

01:42:05
Bobby Casey
Well, from a tax standpoint, California, if you move abroad from California, but you still have a connection to California, like you still have a California driver’s license, you still have an address, you get mail there, maybe your bank account or your credit card statements or whatever are still addressed to a California address. California is going to consider you a state resident for tax purposes, whether you’re physically there or not, just because you have the perception of the connection to California, whereas at the federal level, you can take advantage of the foreign earned income exclusion or the foreign tax credit. California doesn’t care about that.

01:42:45
Bobby Casey
So if you were a California resident wanting to exit the U.S. and move abroad, ideally what you would want is a virtual mailbox in a zero-tax state like South Dakota or Florida or Wyoming or Texas or something like that. So that you could show California that you’ve all of those connecting factors. You’ve exited California for that purpose. So now you have a mailing address and we’ll just use South Dakota as an example. You have a mailing address in South Dakota, your bank statements now go to South Dakota, and you’ve moved your driver’s license, for example, to South Dakota. And voter registration, that’s another one they consider. So there could be reasons, but who knows? That’s a pretty generalized question.

01:43:33
Bobby Casey
So hopefully, at least I gave a little bit of context for maybe a reason you might want to have it in a particular place, but for the purpose of just getting mailed? Then no, that doesn’t really make a difference.

01:43:45
Robert Chadwick
Thank you, Bobby. Next question. Can the LLC carry different businesses, like property investment, financial trading, or even, say, design consulting?

01:43:59
Bobby Casey
Under one entity? Can it? Yes. Should you? Never in a million years should you do that. You should never commingle assets with, first of all, you should never, as I mentioned before, you should always separate individual assets into individual LLCs for at least with real estate from a liability standpoint, because you have that slip and fall incident or some idiot decides to build a meth lab in your rental house kitchen. You don’t want to aggregate that risk across all of the other assets in that LLC, number one. So from a liability standpoint, it’s a bad idea.

01:44:37
Bobby Casey
Number two, you don’t want to have, for example, your brokerage account in the same LLC with your real estate investments because again, you have that liability issue with every single human being that steps foot on that property and you have no idea who they’re going to be. If it’s a rental property, even worse, if it’s a commercial property like you own a strip mall or an apartment building or something like that, every single person exponentially raises your liability there. And if that LLC gets sued for some litigation event, you have just exposed your liquid asset portfolio, your brokerage account, to that liability. Like, personally, I keep my brokerage account in a separate LLC that owns nothing other than my liquid investments. That’s it.

01:45:20
Bobby Casey
So I don’t even have a liability within that LLC because, I mean, my stocks and bonds don’t burn houses down, right? My stocks and bonds don’t cause wrongful death. And like, I don’t have any liability associated with that. But my rental properties do. My rental properties create that problem. And then also from a business standpoint, I would never want to own my operating business in the same entity that has investable assets. Because from the same liability perspective, if your business gets sued and you lose that lawsuit and get a judgment, they can go after your brokerage account. That’s one reason. From an accounting standpoint, you don’t want to have combined bookkeeping and accounting for your business with your brokerage account or your rental properties and that sort of thing for multiple reasons.

01:46:15
Bobby Casey
You might have a really great portfolio that’s making great money, and now your business is losing money. But if you’re combining them into one bookkeeping, it might be a little bit hard to know which one’s making money, and which one’s losing money. It might give you a false sense of security in your business when maybe the business is the one burning cash.

01:46:33
Robert Chadwick
Also, if you plan to sell your business at any point in the future and your buyer is going to come in and wants, generally speaking, three to five years of accounting records of your business, well, if you just had your rental property and your brokerage account in the same LLC, they’re going to ask you to go restate three to five years worth of bookkeeping records to get them a clean set of books because they’re not buying your brokerage account or your rental property. So it just creates a mess that you don’t really want to see. And for what purpose? To save yourself a couple hundred bucks a year? I mean, it seems like kind of a, seems kind of like a silly point to save a couple hundred bucks a year.

01:47:19
Robert Chadwick
I absolutely agree. Next question. Are Wyoming LLCs as beneficial as you have been discussing if I reside in the U.S.?

01:47:31
Bobby Casey
Yes. 100%.

01:47:33
Robert Chadwick
Yep. Okay, next question. As a non-U.S. resident, can I transfer the monthly rental income from the LLC bank account to my personal bank account for personal use/investments?

01:47:47
Bobby Casey
Sure. I mean, that’s just a profit distribution. You’re, you’re, that’s just a, I mean you’re making a profit distribution or you’re paying yourself a “salary” from the LLC. No problem. That’s the whole point, right? That’s the whole point. We want, we want to get this money. I mean, sure. As a business owner, I like to play the game of business, right? It’s like playing Monopoly but with real money. I like to play the game of business, but I also go, I like to go to a steakhouse and eat a wagyu steak once in a while too. And that costs money.

01:48:24
Robert Chadwick
Okay, this is the final question and then we will wrap this up. Does America Mortgages place a lien on the property to secure against the mortgage? Yes, absolutely. So any mortgage that you will obtain in the U.S. will have some sort of charge or lien, which normally has to be in first position. So I think that is it. Bobby, thank you very much. Super, super informative. Really enjoyed your presentation. And again there is a link in the chat that you can either make an appointment to talk to Bobby or actually even open an LLC directly from that link. Bobby, do you have any last words that you’d like to state before we end?

01:49:13
Bobby Casey
Yeah, it was a good webinar, actually. I learned quite a bit from your presentation as well. There are a few things that I know as foreign nationals and expats, getting mortgages for our property is pretty, can be really difficult. I know if you walk into Wells Fargo and say, “I live abroad, but I want a mortgage in the U.S.,” they’re going to shoo you out the door. And it seemed like a great product because I do know, you probably know this better than me, it was either 2020 or 2021. There was some legislation change making it much more difficult for self-employment, self-employed people to get traditional mortgages in the U.S. Do you know it was March 2020 or 2021?

01:50:03
Robert Chadwick
Yeah, I don’t specifically, but again, because of the way that we qualify the mortgages, for us, if it’s an investment property, it doesn’t matter.

01:50:13
Bobby Casey
Yeah, that was my point. So you make it much easier now than getting a traditional mortgage. I’ve gone the investor mortgage route before too and paying 100 basis points over the standard rate and it’s worth it.

01:50:28
Robert Chadwick
Absolutely.

01:50:30
Bobby Casey
So anyway, thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.

01:50:33
Robert Chadwick
Yeah, I appreciate it. And again, everybody will receive a copy of this entire webinar in the mailbox about it’ll probably take about a week. Next Thursday, Tax-Smart strategies with Thomas Carden who is our tax partner. Thursday 6:30, June 13th Singapore time. We look forward to seeing everybody there. There is a link that you can sign up in the chat. Thank you again, Bobby, and thank you everybody for attending wherever you may be. And we look forward to working with you. Thanks, Bobby.

01:51:11
Bobby Casey
Take care.

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Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated, so kindly pardon any transcription or grammatical errors that may be present.