I own 2 houses (one being my personal) with a quite a bit of equity in them. What is the best way to go about protecting them? Best way to protect them from each other in case of a lawsuit? One is my personal and another is rented out on yearly contract. Single guy can’t put it in my wifes name or anything.
Anything would help
Homestead for your personal property is best. A good insurance policy will give the biggest value for protecting the rental home. LLCs and the other stuff you read about won’t do much good in your situation.
Put each of them in seperate land trusts. This link may help:
Thanks that helps a lot
How do you go about setting up a land trust?
That’s an interesting article. I have serious concerns with any organization that advocates fraud.
Buy enough insurance on each property and get an Umbrella policy ($1-$3 million). This will go “over” your 2 houses and autos too. Cost should be $150-$500 per year.
Tom
buy good liability insurance ($1-2M) and forget about it. many, many lawsuit settle for insurance amts. The probability you every need it is extremely small, but its worth the couple hundred dollars a year.
Wow, that’s an amazing article to say the least.
You do this, I think Fraud is the least of your “indictments”.
Goodness! How much equity is the OP trying to protect that would justify the premium of a $1-$2M insurance policy??? I’d say go out and get an equity line or credit line on the property for the equity. Do not use the credit line or spend the cash. Keep balance to zero - total available credit will still show up on title as a lien on the property. Shop around for the lowest yearly fee on the credit line - that will be cheaper than insurance premiums.
Remember, plaintiffs’ lawyers will not even take a case unless there is $$ to make on the properties. The lawyers will look up the property on their asset search sites and see that it is fully leveraged - hence, no equity and no lawsuit award - at least not enough for the effort.