You don’t need a corporation to buy a rental property. Plenty of investors do well owning in their personal names. I chose a different route: I use corporations to hold most of my properties.
This article isn’t a technical tax guide. It’s how I think about structure, risk, and control — so you can understand the logic before you ever pay a lawyer a dollar.
Why bother with structure?
As your portfolio grows, your concerns shift from “Can I afford this property?” to:
- How exposed am I personally if something goes wrong?
- Do I want asset #7 tied directly to asset #1?
- Are my books clean enough to scale?
- How will income and capital gains be taxed?
Structure won’t eliminate risk or taxes. It just gives you more control over where those things land.
Holdco vs. Opco — extremely simple
You’ll often hear real estate investors talk about:
- Holdco (holding company): owns shares of other companies, or holds investments/property.
- Opco (operating company): runs an active business (property management, construction, etc.).
In my ecosystem, I use a holding company as the “parent” that owns shares of my operating companies and real estate entities.
It separates risk, organizes income streams, and keeps the investing world cleanly divided from the operating world.