Tax consideration for Non-US citizen transferring US property to US citizen

[Chien Chen]

Hello BP friends,

My mother in-law (Non-US citizen, Non-US resident) owns a SFH in Los Angeles, CA and would like to transfer the property title to us. We plan to use the property as rental home instead of primary residence. Our current understanding is that doing so will trigger significant amount of gift taxes. We were wondering if anyone has similar experience and could recommend us a more tax-saving strategy? We heard that setting up a LLC+Foreign Trust might be one option but we still struggle to find any more information on how to implement it in practice.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!