West Virginia's carve-out is written for deeds without consideration, and a mortgage is where that breaks

The West Virginia Exemption, and the Conditions That Void It

Read the structure before the rate, because the structure is where the answer lives. W. Va. Code § 11-22-1 defines "Document" as "any deed, or instrument or writing by which any real property within this state or any interest in real property is granted, conveyed or otherwise transferred", and then provides that "'Document' as defined herein does not include: ... (7) Deeds without consideration between a natural person or persons or a testamentary or inter vivos trust and a limited liability company that is wholly owned by the natural person or persons or the trust". The tax itself is imposed by § 11-22-2(a) on "every person who delivers, accepts, or presents for recording any document", as "an excise tax upon the privilege of transferring title to real estate". So the question is never "do I qualify for an exemption". It is whether the instrument you are recording is a "document" at all.

The mortgage is what turns that from a formality into a real problem. The same section defines "Value" as "the amount of the full actual consideration for the document, paid or to be paid, including the amount of any lien or liens assumed; and in the case of any document without consideration, the actual monetary value of the property conveyed or transferred."

An LLC that assumes the existing loan has given consideration, and subdivision (7) is written for deeds without any. There is a textual distinction we want to be straight about rather than smooth over: the statute's word is "assumed", and a deed under which the LLC takes the property subject to the mortgage without assuming it is not, on the face of the section, the same instrument as one where the LLC assumes the debt. We found no West Virginia agency guidance drawing that line. This page is not going to tell you which side of it your deed sits on. That is a question for a West Virginia real estate lawyer or the clerk's office that will record it, and it is worth asking before the deed exists rather than after.

Two more things about how the money moves. Section 11-22-2(b) provides that the county tax "shall be paid by the grantor therein unless the grantee accepts the document without such tax having been paid, in which event such tax shall be paid by the grantee", so on a transfer where you are on both ends, the allocation question answers itself, but the default matters if anyone else is involved. And as amended, § 11-22-2(a) provides that from July 1, 2025 the state-rate excise "shall be a county excise tax retained by the county wherein the tax was collected." The rate is still fixed uniformly by state statute; the money is county money now. That is why the county commission has become the more relevant body here, and why the county-level portion is the part most likely to move.

One workaround that does not exist in West Virginia: selling the LLC instead of the building. Article 22 runs from § 11-22-1 through § 11-22-10, definitions, rate, judicial sales, documentary stamps, sale of stamps, the clerk's duties, failure to affix, recording penalties, unlawful acts and refunds, and the tax attaches only to a document delivered, accepted or presented for recording. Nothing in the article reaches a transfer of interests in an entity. There is also a separate flat fee "upon the privilege of transferring real estate for consideration" directed to the Affordable Housing Fund, which is charged on its own terms.

Whatever the state does, counties and municipalities in West Virginia can levy transfer tax of their own on the same deed. Whether a local exemption follows the state one varies, and it is not safe to assume either way. Check with the recorder for the county the property sits in before you assume the total.

Authority: W. Va. Code § 11-22-1, definition of 'Document', subdivision (7). code.wvlegislature.gov

Does the Transfer Reset Your Property Tax in West Virginia?

No. West Virginia does not cap a property’s assessed value at what you paid for it, assessments track market value on the assessor’s own cycle regardless of who holds title. A deed from you to an LLC you own does not change the assessment, because there was never an acquisition-date value locked in to lose. This is the part of the California story that gets copied onto pages about states where it simply does not apply.

The deed does not cause a reassessment, and West Virginia's actual mechanism is a levy class, not a value reset. W. Va. Code § 11-3-1(a) requires that all property "be assessed annually as of July 1 at sixty percent of its true and actual value", measured by what the property would sell for if voluntarily offered by the owner, an annual market-value exercise with no acquisition-value cap for the deed to trip.

What changes is which class the property sits in. W. Va. Code § 11-8-5 puts in Class II "All property owned, used and occupied by the owner exclusively for residential purposes", and everything else residential falls into Class III outside municipalities or Class IV inside them, which carry higher maximum levy rates. Here is the part that gets misattributed to the LLC: a property that is already rented already fails "used and occupied by the owner". It is already Class III or Class IV before the LLC exists. The class turns on use and occupancy, not on whose name is on the deed, so for a property that has been a rental for years the transfer changes nothing on this front.

Where it does bite is the conversion case. You move out of a house you lived in, let it, and put it in an LLC, all in the same few months. The class change and the deed happen together and the bill increase gets blamed on the entity. The same is true of § 11-3-1(b)'s income-based valuation direction for property "owned, used and occupied by the owner thereof exclusively for residential purposes", which stops applying for the same reason.

One thing we did not check: the homestead exemption in W. Va. Code ch. 11 art. 6B, the exemption for owner-occupants aged 65 or older and for permanently disabled owner-occupants. We have not read its terms and assert nothing about them here. If you hold it, ask the county assessor what letting and then deeding the property does to it, and ask before you record.

Separately, and this catches people converting a former home into a rental: the benefits that turn on owning and occupying the property as your residence, a homestead exemption, an owner-occupancy credit, a residential assessment rate, are not things an LLC occupies a home to earn. Where the property still carries one, the deed puts it at risk, and the bill goes up whether or not the assessment itself moves. Which benefit is at stake, and on what terms, is a question for the assessor in the county the property sits in.

Authority: W. Va. Code § 11-3-1(a); W. Va. Code § 11-8-5, code.wvlegislature.gov

Moving a Property You Already Own Into the LLC in West Virginia

1. 1

   Decide whether the deed can genuinely be without consideration

   Subdivision (7) of the "Document" definition covers deeds "without consideration" between a natural person and a wholly owned LLC. That is the condition the whole question turns on, and it is decided by what actually moves, not by what is typed on the instrument. Nothing of value can come back the other way.

2. 2

   Work out what happens to the mortgage, in writing, before you draft

   If the LLC assumes the loan, the statute's definition of value expressly includes "the amount of any lien or liens assumed". If the LLC takes the property subject to the mortgage without assuming it, the statute's word is "assumed" and no West Virginia agency guidance we found resolves that distinction. Either way this is a conversation with the lender and with a West Virginia lawyer, and it is the step that decides the cost.

3. 3

   Confirm the LLC is wholly owned by the people on the deed

   The carve-out requires an LLC "wholly owned by the natural person or persons or the trust" making the deed. A partner, an investor or a holding entity in the ownership chain takes the instrument outside subdivision (7). Get the operating agreement and the deed to describe the same people before recording, not afterwards.

4. 4

   Record with the county clerk and settle the excise there

   The clerk's office handles recording and the documentary stamps under article 22, and since July 2025 the state-rate excise is retained by the county where it is collected. If there is a judgment to be made about whether your deed is a "document", it is made at that counter.

5. 5

   Put the business registration certificate in the LLC's name

   The § 11-12-3 certificate attaches to the business of renting, so it survives the transfer and now names the wrong owner. Nothing prompts you to update it, which is why this is the step most often missed. The certificate is per business location rather than per building, so a portfolio doesn't need one for each house.

6. 6

   Move insurance, banking and the leases across

   The LLC as named insured on the landlord policy, a bank account in the LLC's name, rent paid to the LLC, leases assigned or reissued. If you let short-term, note that the state sales tax and the county or municipal hotel occupancy tax are administered by different bodies, so registering with one doesn't register you with the other.

One LLC Per Property, or One for the Portfolio?

West Virginia authorises series LLCs, and a series can be filed with the state in its own right.

This is new law, and that is the first thing to know about it. West Virginia adopted the Uniform Protected Series Act as Article 14 of chapter 31B, the West Virginia Uniform Limited Liability Company Act, by Committee Substitute for S.B. 670 in the 2026 regular session, approved by the Governor on April 1, 2026 and effective ninety days from passage, June 12, 2026. Before that West Virginia had no series provision at all, which is why it does not appear on any list of series states written earlier than this year, and why advice about West Virginia portfolios written even eighteen months ago is describing a state that could not do this.

Mechanically it is a filed regime rather than an internal one. Section 31B-14-103 makes a protected series "a person distinct from" the company, from every other protected series, and from the members. Section 31B-14-401(b) keeps each set of debts on its own side: "A debt, obligation, or other liability of a protected series is solely the debt, obligation, or liability of the protected series", and neither the company nor another series is liable for it "solely by reason of" the relationship. Each series is established by filing: § 31B-14-201(b) requires the company to deliver to the Secretary of State a protected series designation stating the name of the company and the name of the series, and the series exists when that designation takes effect. The Secretary of State's Business & Licensing Division publishes it as Form LLD-11.

The condition on all of it is the associated-asset test, and it is stricter than "keep separate books." Section 31B-14-301(b) makes an asset an associated asset of a series only if the series "creates and maintains records" sufficient for "a disinterested, reasonable individual" to identify the asset and distinguish it from the company's and every other series' assets, to determine when and from what person the series acquired it, and, where it came from the company or another series, to determine the consideration, the payor and the payee. That is written from the point of view of a stranger reading your files years later, which is exactly who will be reading them if it ever matters.

A caveat on the fee, because the sources disagree on their timing rather than their substance. The codified fee schedule at § 59-1-2 as published on code.wvlegislature.gov does not yet show the S.B. 670 amendments. The designation fee above comes from the Secretary of State's own fee-bearing form and from the enrolled bill, which are the current authorities. Confirm it with the Secretary of State's office when you file rather than relying on the online code.

code.wvlegislature.gov

What Creditors Can Reach, What the West Virginia Statute Says

The reason to hold a rental in an LLC is usually to keep a claim arising at the property from reaching everything else you own. The reverse question matters just as much and gets far less attention: if someone wins a judgment against you personally, can they reach the rental inside the LLC? That is what a state’s charging-order provision decides.

West Virginia's LLC act makes the charging order the exclusive remedy and does not address the single-member case, but it does expressly allow a court to foreclose on the charged interest.

Start with the citation, because a wrong one is common here. West Virginia's LLC act is still the 1996 Uniform Limited Liability Company Act, chapter 31B, so the charging-order provision is § 31B-5-504, titled "Rights of creditor". It is not a § 503, in chapter 31B, § 31B-5-503 is "Rights of transferee", a different subject. A page citing "§ 503" for West Virginia charging orders is citing the wrong section, usually because it was written from a newer act's numbering.

The text does two things most owners do not expect. Subsection (a) lets a court charge the distributional interest and "appoint a receiver of the share of the distributions due or to become due to the judgment debtor and make all other orders, directions, accounts and inquiries the judgment debtor might have made or which the circumstances may require to give effect to the charging order."

Subsection (b) provides that "A charging order constitutes a lien on the judgment debtor's distributional interest. The court may order a foreclosure of a lien on a distributional interest subject to the charging order at any time. A purchaser at the foreclosure sale has the rights of a transferee." Note the words "at any time": the foreclosure power in the section is stated without a precondition on its face. Subsection (e) then makes this "the exclusive remedy by which a judgment creditor of a member or a transferee may satisfy a judgment out of the judgment debtor's distributional interest", so the charging order is exclusive, and the charging order includes a foreclosure power.

What the section does not contain is any reference to a single-member LLC. The words do not appear, in any equivalent form, anywhere in § 31B-5-504. West Virginia has not said one way or the other whether a one-owner rental LLC, the default structure for a small landlord, is treated differently from a multi-member one. The 2026 protected series act did not change this: it added Article 14 and left § 31B-5-504 exactly as it was. We are reporting the text, not the outcome, and the gap in it is a genuine gap rather than an implication.

We are reporting what the section says, not what a court would do with your facts. Outcomes turn on how the LLC was capitalised, how it has been operated and what the creditor is owed, and none of that is something a page can assess. If the answer above is load-bearing for you, it is a question for a West Virginia attorney.

Authority: W. Va. Code § 31B-5-504, code.wvlegislature.gov

Three Problems No State Transfer Rule Solves

These land the same way in West Virginia as everywhere else. One because it is federal law, two because they are contracts you signed. Which is exactly why they get left off state pages. They are also the three most likely to actually cost a landlord money, so they are here rather than buried.

The due-on-sale point is the one that generates the most bad advice. The Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, at 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), bars a lender from enforcing a due-on-sale clause on nine categories of transfer of residential property of fewer than five dwelling units. The one people cite is the eighth: a transfer into an inter vivos trust in which the borrower is and remains a beneficiary and which does not relate to a transfer of rights of occupancy in the property. Neither that paragraph nor any of the other eight names a transfer to a limited liability company. The protection quoted for an LLC transfer is written for trusts, and the occupancy qualifier is the limb that matters most to a landlord, because a rental is occupied by someone else.

One honest caveat on that list. The ninth category is open-ended. It reaches any other transfer described in regulations issued under the Act, at 12 C.F.R. § 591.5(b), so it is a list that can be extended by regulation rather than a closed set fixed by the statute. We have not read those regulations end to end, and say so rather than describing the statute as more settled than we checked.

In practice lenders often do not call a loan when payments keep arriving, and that is genuinely what usually happens, but “usually not enforced” is a different thing from “not permitted,” and only one of them is a plan. The way to find out is to ask your servicer for written consent before you record, not after.

Which deed you use is a decision, not a formality. A quitclaim deed transfers whatever interest you happen to have and warrants nothing, which is why it is the cheap default for a transfer between yourself and your own company, and why title professionals warn against it. It can leave a gap in the chain of title that surfaces years later when you sell or refinance, and because it warrants nothing it gives the LLC no recourse against you if a defect turns up. A warranty deed carries the covenants across. Which one is appropriate depends on how the property was acquired and what your title history looks like, and it is a question worth asking before the deed is drafted rather than after it is recorded.

Tell your title insurer before you record. An owner’s title policy insures the person named in it. Convey the property to an LLC and the insured owner and the record owner are no longer the same. Which is the fact pattern in which coverage gets argued about at the worst possible moment, when a claim is already live. Some insurers will endorse an existing policy across to the entity, sometimes for a modest fee; some will not, and a new policy means a new premium on the current value. Either way it is a phone call before the deed rather than a discovery afterwards, and it belongs in the same budget as the tax above.

On the fourth thing people ask about: beneficial ownership reporting. Under 31 C.F.R. § 1010.380, a “reporting company” is an entity formed outside the United States and registered to do business in a State, and paragraph (c)(2)(xxiv) separately exempts any entity created by filing with a Secretary of State. A rental LLC you form in West Virginia is therefore exempt and files no beneficial ownership report. Pages telling you to file within 30 days of formation are describing the rule as it stood before March 2025. The exception runs the other way: an LLC formed in another country and registered to do business in West Virginia does still report. More on what compliance actually requires →

Does West Virginia Make You Register the Rental?

Yes. Registration is administered by the West Virginia Tax Division, under W. Va. Code § 11-12-3. A single-family dwelling can fall within it, not just apartment buildings. Read the scope below before assuming it does or does not reach yours. The fee is $30.

The duty attaches to the rental itself, so it does not disappear when the deed does, but the registration is in your name and the owner is about to be the LLC. Some states let you amend the existing record; others treat a change of owner as ending the old registration and requiring a fresh one, sometimes with its own fee. Ask West Virginia Tax Division which of the two applies before you record, because nothing in the filing process prompts you to.

The thing worth understanding is what kind of requirement this is. West Virginia has no housing-code rental registry, chapter 37, article 6 (Landlord and Tenant) runs from § 37-6-1 to § 37-6-31 and contains no registration section at all. The duty comes from the tax code. W. Va. Code § 11-12-3(a) provides that "No person shall, without a business registration certificate, engage in or prosecute, in the State of West Virginia, any business activity without first obtaining a business registration certificate from the Tax Commissioner of the State of West Virginia."

Renting out real property is business activity, and the Tax Division says so in its own publication TSD-316: "Persons who lease or rent out real estate or provide lodging to others are engaging in business in this State and must register with the State Tax Department and obtain a business registration certificate ... Anyone engaged in these activities, whether as an individual, partnership, corporation or other business entity, must register. Failure to register may subject the owner of the business to fines or criminal penalties."

One honest limit on how far that carries. TSD-316 is a lodging publication, and TSD-435, which makes the single-family reach explicit, is about short-term rentals. So the strongest support for the plain twelve-month residential tenancy is the general "business activity" language of § 11-12-3 itself rather than a Tax Division sentence written about long-term landlords. That is the state of the evidence, and it is worth knowing the difference between a statute that plainly reaches you and an agency publication that says so in as many words.

Two practicalities. The certificate is per business location, not per building: TSD-435 states that "a certificate for each rental building is not required", so a growing portfolio does not multiply certificates the way it multiplies entities. And § 11-12-3(c) carries a narrow exemption for a person not required to collect or withhold tax whose gross income from business activity in the preceding tax year was $4,000 or less, which a short-term rental owner collecting sales tax cannot use, because that exemption is only open to someone with no collection or withholding duty.

code.wvlegislature.gov

If You Rent Short-Term in West Virginia

A short-term let is a different tax animal from a twelve-month tenancy, and the LLC has nothing to do with it. The lodging tax follows the stay, not the owner.

There are two charges here with two different administrations, which is the practical complication. The state consumers sales and service tax on the rental is the Tax Division's, and it publishes the rules in TSD-435 and TSD-316. The county or municipal hotel occupancy tax is not: TSD-435 says it is "collected and remitted directly to the county or municipality imposing the tax", and the Tax Division states plainly that it "does not administer this tax." There is no single office to file everything with.

The month line has a wrinkle that saves money if you know it. TSD-316 states that "If a daily or weekly rental extends to more than 30 days, the entire rental period is not subject to sales tax". The whole stay drops out, not just the nights past the threshold. The same publication defines a "permanent place of abode" as occupancy of the premises "by the same individual for more than 30 consecutive days", and states that rentals of houses, apartments and other buildings on a month-to-month basis or longer are not subject to sales tax at all.

Platforms are covered on both taxes, but on different footings. State sales tax comes through West Virginia's general marketplace facilitator rules, as TSD-435 describes: where the tax on a rental is collected by a marketplace facilitator, "it does not need to also be collected and remitted by the owner or manager of the unit." The hotel occupancy tax comes through an express statutory mandate in W. Va. Code § 7-18-4(b), effective January 1, 2022, reaching marketplaces that facilitate West Virginia sales of $100,000 or more in gross revenue or 200 or more separate transactions in the preceding or current calendar year. Bookings you take yourself sit outside both mechanisms.

A platform collecting the state tax does not always cover every local tax on the same booking, and it never covers a booking taken directly. If you take reservations off-platform as well, that is where the exposure sits.

Authority: W. Va. Code § 7-18-4(b) (marketplace facilitators; hotel occupancy tax); W. Va. Code § 8-13-3 and § 7-18-1 (municipal and county hotel occupancy tax); WV Tax Division TSD-316 and TSD-435, tax.wv.gov

Who to Ask in West Virginia

The county clerk records the deed and is where the excise question lands first, article 22 assigns the clerk duties around documentary stamps and recording, so the clerk's office is the practical front door for whether your instrument is a taxable "document". The county assessor administers levy class under § 11-8-5 and is the office to ask about the article 6B homestead exemption if you hold one.

The West Virginia Tax Division issues the business registration certificate and publishes TSD-316 and TSD-435 as free PDFs on tax.wv.gov; both are considerably more readable than the code and both are cited on this page for a reason. Hotel occupancy tax questions go to the county or municipality that imposes it, not to the state. The Secretary of State's Business & Licensing Division handles the protected series designation. Its site now runs at sos.wv.gov/business, so the older SharePoint-era links that still surface in search results will 404 on you.

Forming the LLC Itself

Nothing about the formation process changes because the LLC will hold rental property, the articles, the registered agent requirement and the annual filing are the same as for any other West Virginia LLC. The walkthrough lives in the formation guide rather than being repeated here.

How to start an LLC in West Virginia →

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