Has anyone used a self-directed IRA?

[Shelby Willitts]

I am thinking of transferring funds from my Simple IRA to a self-directed real estate IRA. Wondering if anyone has done this and how difficult is it?

[Daniel Dietz]

@Shelby Willitts, both my 3 partners and I all use Self Directed IRAs (SDIRA) and SOLO401Ks that are very similar (But you must be self employed). We love it. 

As to @Greg Scott's comment asking if 'it makes sense' because real estate investing is ALREADY 'tax advantaged' (you will hear a lot of that) I would argue that IF you already have funds in a retirement account, the question THEN becomes 'how to make the best use of those funds'.

You don't want to compare real estate outside of a retirement account to real estate INside a retirement account. You want to compare "what is the best use of these funds ALREADY inside of your account'. For us, that is a big portion of real estate. Stocks give an average of about a 10% return with moderate risk, and real estate give us a 12-20%+ return, with much less risk in our opinion.

As far as how to do it there are quite a few good Plan Providers here in the forums, such as @Dmitriy Fomichenko (who we use) @Brian Eastman, @Carl Fischer, @Bill Hampton, @George Blower just to name a few. When I called to find a provider all of the ones on here I talked to seems WAY more personable than a few of the large companies such as Equity Trust.

Dan Dietz