Are they the true owner ?

General Real Estate Investing
1

I searched my county’s database for fun, and found this info about one property:

Owner LIU XXXXXX & DOU-xxxxxx LIU TRUSTS

are the two people the true owner of the property?
or they are just trustee, helping true owner to cover identity?

2

Howdy Donaldshi:

It is hard to say who owns the property for sure. One thing is that the tax authority can be months behind and if it has been sold it could take months to show the new owners. Also the trust could be a cloak for the real owners or the children of the owners etc. A lot of investors will not even use their names in a trust so they could be the actual owners of the trust and the beneficiaries of the trust as well which would make them own the property. They will know the owners if they are not the actual owners. They could have also done a sub2 sale and made the new owners the beneficiaries of the trust. Too many guesses here, you will need to contact them to find the real story

Good luck

3

I disagree with Tedjr, but it is only a technical point.

The titled owner of the property is the trustee(s).

The beneficiary of the trust is shielded from public view.

4

Thank you guys for your thoughts!!

If I set up a trust for my property, making trustee and beneficiary myself.
then in the public database, what will happen to my property’s appearance?

Should it like :

XXXXXX (property name), Donald Shi Trusts ?

But people don’t know if I am the owner or not, right? if there is not the
“trusts” followed, then they know I am the owner, am I correct?

5

Why bother with a trust at all? If you are both the trustee and the beneficiary, seems kind of pointless to put a trust in place in the first place.

6

Now… I started an LLC… and I am the principal of this LLC.

Can I use this LLC as the trustee and place my real name as the beneficiaries?

7

Why bother?

The LLC gives you the asset protection you want. Since you are personally shielded from liability from your LLC activities, what will the trust do for you at this point?

8

Will it makes my future ownership reassignment easier?

Where I can just appoint the new benefiticaries instead of having a new title recorded? And also prevent probate periods in an event that I die?

Realstart