After more reading and searching around, I decided to file a Florida LLC for a few reasons (besides the asset protection and income passthrough provisions)
1) First I am already here, so I can act as my own resident agent. When you file for a corporation in a different state, you need to have a resident agent there with an address local to that state. If I wanted to file a second Nevada Corporation in the future, I would need to pay a resident agent in Nevada. Filing in Florida saves me that fee.
2) LLC allows special provisions such that the if I later want to have silent investors join in, ownership and income from the LLC can be made very flexible. They do not need to take ownership in the company in order to invest.
3) The traditional downsides of LLC, which is that if I were to take a salary from the company, I need to pay self employment tax, does not apply here.
4) Filing is easy.  Secretary of State in Florida uses a web-based system that makes filing very simple. You can search for “Secretary of State” and the name of your state in google. Your state may also already have a system in place.
As a REI, you probably have a lot of expenses. If you are like me, it’s be a shame to pay those costs with hard earned after-tax dollars from your day job. So a lot of people set up business entities to take advantage of tax deductions. They are not hard to do and the savings will easily more than pay for the initial upfront costs.
Gas costs from driving to potential investments, repairs costs of existing properties, and even that camera you bought to snap pictures of potential investment properties can all be tax deductible if you have a business to pass through those expenses to your personal tax.
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Have you ever read your bank statements and saw the few cents that you earn in your savings account? I have always tried to put most of my money in savings accounts and only a few hundred dollars in the checking account, but tonight, I did some calculations and found that if I just moved the money in my savings account to an online saving acccount (HSBC at 4.25%), I can earn enough interest for a few nights out on the town a month! In the grand scheme of things, this probably doesn’t matter too much. But with just a little bit effort put in, I can sleep better knowing that my bank isn’t ripping me off with their 0.1% savings rate).