Source: Forbes —
When I was a freshly-minted real estate attorney (my firm now employs over 400 people in four states), I was all about the asset protection and the tax savings. I would give my clients great strategies on how to reduce their taxes to nearly zero and make their assets disappear on paper. I developed some great techniques, some of which I still use today, for helping real estate investors accomplish specific goals.
But it wasn’t until I became a real estate investor myself that I learned an important lesson: all the choices you make in your business must come together in an organic, mutually supportive way. What law school couldn’t teach me, and what I had to learn by doing, is that a successful real estate investing business is a three-legged stool.
A stool can’t stand on two legs. Nor can it stand if one of the legs is longer or shorter than the others. All three legs must come into balance with one another. The three legs of the successful real estate investor’s stool are asset protection, tax planning, and business planning.
