First, I wan to point out that I am not an attorney and I am not giving legal advice. Your should meet with your key dream teams to get professional advice. With that said, I want to share with you some info on our Asset Protection Checklist.
The time to take action and prepare for asset protection is before you need it. Use the Asset Protection Checklist and your advisers to make sure you are not caught off guard with a potentially devastating situation that could have easily been avoided with just a little planning.
Your key asset protection advisers will be your insurance agent and your attorney. Make sure you meet with them with an updated financial statement regularly to make sure you are properly insured and your business and personal assets are properly structured.
Our checklist for asset protection helps keep you engaged on at least a quarterly basis to remind you to do the things you should be doing to protect yourself including updating insurance, maintaining your entities properly and documenting your assets regularly.
Until my next post,
James
Here is another article that was submitted to us for publication that gives you a very basic, big picture overview of asset protection:
Asset protection can come in many different forms, but all are designed to protect the assets of individuals and businesses. These minimize your exposure and protect you from whatever may come. Three of the most popular types of Asset Protection (links are to exclusive Real Estate Investor Bronze Member resources) are insurance, titling and the formation of an entity. Here is a brief description of each.
Insurance is the most common type of Asset Protection, which consists of transferring the risk to another party. In essence, they are betting that you will not need insurance, and you are betting that you will. You will pay a monthly or annual premium and be insured to be indemnified up to a certain value. To make sure you get the best rate, work with an insurance agent and have them check on the price with different insurance companies.
Another form of Asset Protection is titling. A title gives you the rights to a piece of property, which may include possession, use, easement, partition and many others. The title proves that you own a piece of property, so it would not be possible for someone else to sell it for profit. Any potential buyer would perform a title search to ensure that they are buying property from the legal owner.
For a business owner, it is important to protect personal assets. This can be done by forming a limited liability company or LLC. As members are not responsible for company debts, this is effective Asset Protection. You will need an attorney to advise you and create the necessary paperwork.
Whatever you decide, it would be wise to seek advice from professionals. An attorney or insurance agent can help you find the best product to protect your assets. It’s important to have some sort of Asset Protection or a small bump in the road can cause you to lose it all.
Be sure to read up on Asset Protection since it is an extremely important part of your Real Estate Investing plan.
Until my next post,
James
So, you’ve managed to buy 10 investment properties and you are well on your way to becoming a millionaire real estate investor. That’s great news. Congratulations. So, now that you have your base of assets set up that your tenants are paying off with each monthly rent payment, properties (despite the occasional market dip like the one we’re experiencing now) are appreciating and your getting some great tax benefits isn’t it time to start thinking about ways to protect your assets? Well, not quite…
Actually the best time to start thinking about Asset Protection (link is to exclusive resources for our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members only) and strategies to protect yourself from loss is when you are about to buy the property.
How you purchase the property is a major factor is how you set up your asset protection plan. Are you going to buy it in your personal name? In the name of a partnership? How about a corporation? Or, maybe you’ll use an LLC? Maybe you’ve studied how to use a land trust to keep your name off public record? While you can often go back, after the fact, and fix the things you might not have done the best way later, it would have been better to know your strategy for protecting your assets up front so that you could have made the purchase correctly with asset protection in mind from the start.
So, if you are just getting started, that’s great news. You can do it correctly from the beginning. If you’re done with your accumulation phase and you’re in the payoff and management phase, then go back and fix it. If you’re in the middle, when would now be a good time to start doing it correctly? The correct answer to that question is that NOW would be the time to start thinking about Asset Protection.
Until my next post,
James
Over the last week or so, I have been slowly adding additional resources to assist our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members in creating and maintaining their business entities whether it is a corporation, limited liability company or trust.
While I am far from done (as this is a monstrous undertaking), I did get the the How To Form A LLC checklist and all required forms up for you to use immediately.
This checklist includes the steps on how to form your own LLC for your real estate investing including sample Articles Of Organization, Operating Agreement and Bill Of Sale For Membership Interest forms as well as links to required IRS forms.
I will be adding similar checklist for forming a corporation and trusts in a future update as well as a plethora of forms for making maintaining your entities much easier. It is important to realize that while having an entity set up is great, if you are not documenting and keeping it maintained it is absolutely useless for asset protection. That’s why I am working on getting all those forms up for you.
Until my next post,
James
A less thought of but very powerful advantage to buying houses “subject to” the existing financing is the ability to buy houses using your corporation or LLC.
Since you are not qualifying for a new loan your corporation or LLC can be the buyer on properties that you are purchasing “subject to” the existing financing.
If you are concerned about Asset Protection and/or privacy of ownership, using an entity can prove to be very helpful.
Often real estate investors will use a trust–in addition to their corporation or LLC–when buying a property “subject to” the existing financing. This is NOT because a trust will not trigger any due on sale clauses, but because it can add an additional layer of asset protection by keeping your name off public record.
See your attorney for more information about how to structure an asset protection plan for you unique situation.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. We have some great asset protection resources for our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members. Upgrade today to access those.
Statistics tell us that you are more likely to be named in a lawsuit than you are to be hospitalized this year and as a real estate investor with assets to go after and some of the risky things we do (manage property, fix up houses and so on), this is even more true.
Asset protection is a critical knowledge area that you must focus on now, BEFORE there is trouble and it is TOO LATE.
In this audio program, part of the Top Secret Courses series, you will learn the following:
- Why asset protection is critically important for you to worry about right now
- Complete a Risk Assessment Worksheet that will help you identify areas you are at risk and help you minimize those risks through awareness and preventative action.
- A detailed list of things you can do (or not do) to help protect yourself from lawsuits and help you keep your hard earned money if you are involved in one.
- Retirement accounts and asset protection
- Now is the time to take action on protecting yourself (not when a lawsuit is threatened or filed)
- Resources for retail, free and low cost asset protection help
Details:
- Featuring Jassen Bowman with Sasha
- Running time: Approximately 72 minutes
- Includes access to members only password protected website with outline and supplemental information
- Product ID: TSC0003
You can purchase this audio program as an instant MP3 download using the link below or you can download it for free as part of your Real Estate Investor Bronze Membership which includes over 100 real estate course downloads, all our systems, checklists, forms, live training each month and consulting on your real estate investing business.
