Playbooks
Structuring by Industry
LLC structures for real estate, healthcare, and licensed businesses.
01
Industry playbooks: the same machinery, applied to your business
State Lines, The Blueprint, and The Rulebook cover every LLC. This section covers what changes when your business is also a licensed practice, a regulated industry, or something with its own overlay on top of ordinary entity law.
01
Real estate: the lease is the asset, and the clause nobody reads is why
Nobody needs a license to own property. The real sophistication in this vertical lives in specific lease clauses buried past page twenty.
02
Office: the conversion trend that runs into physics before it runs into zoning
Everything on the real estate core applies. What's specific to office: the conversion story skips its own first constraint, and subtenants are protected only as well as a document most never think to ask for.
03
Retail: the formulas were written before online sales existed
Everything on the real estate core applies. What's specific to retail: percentage rent and radius restrictions predate e-commerce, and one anchor leaving can trigger co-tenancy rights across an entire rent roll at once.
04
Industrial and logistics: the number that matters isn't on the rent roll
Everything on the real estate core applies. What's specific to industrial: clear height, not square footage, is what actually determines storage capacity, and prior contamination can make a buyer strictly liable for damage they never caused.
05
Multifamily: the rules that follow the unit, not the owner
Everything on the real estate core applies. What's specific to multifamily: rent stabilization can survive a vacancy even when a new owner assumes it resets, and a completely neutral screening policy can still trigger real fair housing liability.
06
Hospitality: there's no tenant, and that's the whole problem
Everything on the real estate core applies, except there's no lease. A hotel operator gets paid whether or not the owner actually profits, and a franchisor can force a multi-million-dollar renovation as the price of keeping the brand.
07
Land and development: the deal where the risk comes before the asset does
Raw land generates no rent, so the real deal question is who bears the risk that entitlement fails entirely. And a ground lease's fine print decides whether a building worth hundreds of millions survives a default it had nothing to do with.
08
Self-storage: the eviction is a sale, and the statute runs it
Everything on the real estate core applies. What's specific to self-storage: the lien sale that replaces eviction is a strict statutory procedure where one wrong notice creates real liability, and the asset's REIT-favorite economics hide a genuinely operational business.
09
Senior living: the asset class where the real estate answer depends on a healthcare question
Everything on the real estate core applies, and so does an entire second vertical. Which side of the licensure line a property sits on decides which body of law runs the deal, and the standard propco-opco split carries a twist here that most real estate investors haven't priced.
10
Data centers: the lease measures kilowatts, not square feet
Everything on the real estate core applies, except the unit of account. A data center lease is priced on power capacity, the scarce input is a utility interconnection that can take years, and the SLA replaces the habitability clause entirely.
11
Life sciences: the most expensive buildout in real estate, for the weakest credit
Everything on the real estate core applies, at higher stakes. Lab space costs multiples of office to build out, the tenants are often pre-revenue biotechs, and that combination inverts how every standard lease protection has to be sized.
12
Student housing: twelve months of income decided in one leasing season
Everything on the real estate core applies, plus a calendar no other asset class has. The lease is by the bed, the credit is the parent's, and a property that misses its pre-leasing window eats the vacancy for a full academic year.
13
Net lease: the asset class that's only a lease
Everything on the real estate core applies, distilled. A single-tenant net lease deal is a bond wearing a building, the underwriting is the tenant's credit and the lease's remaining term, and the one question that separates pros from coupon-clippers is what the building is worth dark.
Healthcare niches
02
ABA therapy: the niche where the funding source runs the structure
Applied behavior analysis inherits every rule on the healthcare structuring core page. What's actually specific to ABA: licensure that varies by state, revenue concentrated in Medicaid and insurance mandates, and the compliance work that starts the day the entity is formed.
03
Skilled nursing: the deal that can die at the CHOW desk
Everything on the healthcare structuring core applies here. What's specific to skilled nursing: CMS certification that doesn't transfer like an ordinary asset, successor liability for the facility's own history, and a False Claims Act exposure that scales with bed count.
04
Home care and home health: two businesses wearing one name
Everything on the healthcare structuring core applies. What's specific here: medical home health and non-medical home care are regulated as almost entirely different businesses, and a handful of states won't let you enter the medical side at all without proving the public needs you.
05
Hospice: the cap that turns growth into a repayment bill
Everything on the healthcare structuring core applies. What's specific to hospice: an aggregate annual payment cap that has nothing to do with billing accuracy, and a compliance flashpoint built into the benefit itself.
06
Assisted living: the niche that isn't federally regulated the way you'd expect
Everything on the healthcare structuring core applies. What's specific to assisted living: it mostly sits outside CMS certification entirely, which means the resident agreement, not a federal provider contract, is the document actually carrying the compliance and liability weight.
07
Med spas: the entity split most owners never make
Everything on the healthcare structuring core applies. What's specific here: most med spas run their entire revenue through a physician-owned structure that only a fraction of their services actually require, and the 2026 CPOM tightening lands hardest on exactly the absentee-physician pattern this niche is built on.
08
Behavioral health: one roof, several licensing regimes at once
Everything on the healthcare structuring core applies. What's specific here: a practice mixing psychiatrists with therapists is often satisfying two separate ownership statutes simultaneously, and telehealth means the patient's state, not the practice's, decides who has to be licensed where.
09
Dental: the practice that taught the rest of healthcare its own playbook
Everything on the healthcare structuring core applies. What's specific to dental: the DSO model this niche pioneered is now the template every other healthcare vertical copies, and dentistry's own ownership rules are often looser than physician CPOM, which changes what actually needs a friendly-PC wrapper.
10
Substance use treatment: the kickback law that doesn't care about your payor mix
Everything on the healthcare structuring core applies. What's specific here: the federal statute built for this industry specifically reaches private-pay and commercial-insurance arrangements the ordinary Anti-Kickback Statute never touches, which changes how every referral and marketing agreement has to be drafted.
11
Physical and occupational therapy: the trap is who's referring, not who's treating
Everything on the healthcare structuring core applies. What's specific here: a physician who owns the in-house therapy service referring their own patients to it triggers Stark Law self-referral scrutiny that most physician-owned setups don't actually satisfy the way they assume.
12
IDD group homes: the growth ceiling that has nothing to do with demand
Everything on the healthcare structuring core applies. What's specific here: funding is often capped by the state regardless of actual need, and the propco-opco split this site recommends everywhere else needs its lease priced specifically to survive Medicaid's related-party scrutiny.
13
Pharmacy: the license that shows up the moment you start moving product between locations
Everything on the healthcare structuring core applies. What's specific here: pharmacist-ownership rules are often the oldest, strictest professional-ownership restriction on the books, and growing past a single dispensing counter can trigger a completely separate wholesale distributor license nobody planned for.