All Forum Posts by: Scott Meredith

@Christian Morency how about some pictures of what you describe so we can get a better idea of these great sounding tricks.

@Rizwan Halim I posted a blog post about things similar to this a few months ago. Here is a link

https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/3958-the-investor-cop

Land trust or living trust...A CPA can go over the tax benefits of one or the other, but if you want to avoid probate, one of the two trusts.

@Wayne Brooks and @Steven Hamilton II thanks for the replies, I think that is what I am going to do.

Thank you Brandon Turner.

I am moving out of my primary residence (mortgage and title in my name) to make it my first rental. I set up my LLC (two member my wife and I) a year and a half ago with the ideas of creating a great vast portfolio of rentals, well that is not going as well as planned, and my wife has finally persuaded me to use our capital to open a restaurant for her. In California it is $800 a year for the LLC and I pay about $250 for the tax prep each year for it. I will be renting my next residence. I have heard many strategies to help avoid being sued and to protect assets.

The most "protected" way I have heard to have anonymity and asset protection is to move the property into a land trust (avoiding due on sale) with the beneficiary as the LLC, with plenty of insurance. My plan is to do this, or simply dissolve the LLC and take it out of the above scenario.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Another option that is really inexpensive to help with the asset protection by adding privacy is to transfer the properties into a land trust with you as the beneficiary with the umbrella. This will not trigger the due on sale clause of your personal mortgage. This makes it more difficult to find the actual owner of the property and less likely for a lawyer to take a case on contingency for a plaintiff, requiring a person to pony up cash upfront for their lawyer.

Once you have a judgement for them you being the owner of the judgement I believe you now have a right to run their credit without their consent to find them and any assets they may have. Best way to find them and their money

For skip tracing I have used findtheseller.com They charge about $20 for each skip trace and they are pretty quick. It has been a while since I used them, but I remember it only took about 24-48 hours to get the results and I don't remember getting bad results from the few that I did.

You could also check with the local chamber of commerce and see if there is any new memberships or other local retailer/employers coming in. Also check with the city to see if any new business license applications are being filed.