Carl
Level 15

Investors & landlords

Several things to point out here, not all of them having to do with taxes, but it is important enough to make sure you're aware of it.

 - If the property has a mortgage on it, and you changed anything on the title of the property without the written consent of the mortgage holder, you very well may have violated the terms of the mortgage. The lender will find out about this when they receive the next property tax bill to be paid from your escrow account. So it's perfectly possible that this action could make the balance of the loan due and payable immediately, and if not paid in full upon demand, the property can be (and usually will be) foreclosed on for violating the terms of the mortgage. You lose everything.

 - Since the IRS considers a single-member LLC as a disregarded entity (meaning they do not recognize a single member LLC as a separately taxable entity) then transferring rental property to such an entity is a waste of time and money. All rental income is still reported on the SCH E, and absolutely nothing concerning the rental property (income or expenses) is reported on SCH C.
People make the mistake of believing transferring property from personal ownership to LLC ownership (single member or mutli-member LLC as is your case) provides a greater degree of protection in the event a tenant sues. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The "veil of protection" offered by an LLC is about as effective as a wet paper bag. If you feel you need the protection, then do one of two things.

 a) If you establish an S-Corp and then "sell" the property to the S-Corp that will offer about the same "veil of protection" as buying additional liability insurance will. But it will be much more costly and requires much more paperwork on a never-ending continuing basis. 
 With an S-Corp, you have to deal with required state quarterly filings, documented "board of directors" meeting minutes (which are also sent to the state), yearly tax filings at both state and federal levels, as well as legally required minimum taxable distributions to all owners of the S-Corp. If you don't know what you're doing with such an entity, you can quite easily lose quite a lot (if not everything) to back taxes, interest, fines, penalties and late fees. For example, S-Corp returns are due by March 15, and for each month the return is late, the late filing penalty is $125 per month for the federal return. There will also be such a penalty for late filing with the state. An S-corp is considered a separately taxable entity that files it's own 1120-S tax return and will issue all owners at least a K-1. There could be other tax reporting documents the S-Corp could be required to issue also.
Finally, since an S-Corp is considered a separately taxable entity, you can't just transfer property to it very easily. Lenders usually require an S-Corp to apply for it's own mortgage. But if the S-Corp does not already have any assets, most likely that loan application would be disapproved. Lenders are wary of this also, since if the S-Corp files for bankruptcy, then lender's risk of losing can be much higher.

 b) First, there's the insurance angle. Just increase your liability coverage on the rental dwelling policy. Understand the different types of insurance for real estate. a Homeowner's policy is for your primary residence. It does not cover rental property. So when converting property that used to be your primary residence, to a rental then you *MUST* update the property insurance. Rental property is a type of business property, and a homeowner's policy does not cover anything at all on any type of business use property. So if you have a claim on your rental property and file that claim against a standard homeowner's policy, the insurance company will deny your claim and you will lose in court if you think you can go that route.
   With a proper "rental dwelling policy" the absolute lowest amount of liability insurance I've ever seen on such a policy, is $300K. If you feel that's not enough (such as in CA for example) then you can always increase the liability coverage and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than doing anything else. I have one rental property myself that, since it's rather dated, I feel $300K is not enough. So for an extra $100 a year (give or take a few bucks) I increased the liability coverage to $1M.

Now in your case, since you have three named owners of the property and the owners are not married to each other (obviously, since there's three)  you need to file a physically separate IRS Form 1065 Partnership Return for "the business". That tax form is used for both partnerships and multi-member LLCs. Basically at the federal level for tax purposes only, the only difference between a partnership and a multi-member LLC is the spelling. (Literally!)
     The partnership will still report all rental income/expenses on SCH E as a part of that 1065 partnership return. It doesn't matter the percentage of ownership here. It's still a partnership. So the partnership will issue each partner a K-1 which each partner will need in order to complete their personal tax return. It also doesn't matter if two of the partners are married to each other and file a joint return. Each individual partner receives their own K-1 and reports it on the personal tax return. So basically, you can't even start your personal tax return, until after you have completed and filed the 1065 Partnership return and all K-1's have been issued to all owners/partners/investors.

So bottom line here is, you will need TurboTax Business (different from Home & Business) to complete and file the 1065 Partnership Return and issue all required K-1's. Understand that TurboTax Business is not available as an online product, or for MACs. It's for the Windows platform only. You can get it and download the CD installation file right now on line at https://turbotax.intuit.com/small-business-taxes/ but you may find the CD significantly cheaper if you purchase it over the counter at a local authorized reseller in your area.

Overall, I would highly recommend you seek the services of a tax professional in your local area if you are not comfortable with this. You have a lot to do for the first year, assuming 2017 is the first year you owned the rental property, or the first year it was owned by more than one person. You first have to transfer all assets from any personal tax return it was reported on previously, to the partnership return while taking into account and any all prior depreciation taken on those assets prior to the transfer. While this is perfectly doable with the TurboTax software, if you don't know what you're doing a screw-up can be quite $costly$ down the road.