land trust, llc, inc.????

i will be researching this topic but could someone giv me a brief memo on what the difference is in these entities. I read in a book that it is a good idea to have real estate in a trust or was it an llc? anyway i am confused. please help ???

kimesha,

I will try my hand at it, but I am not sure that I will make it much clearer.

I’ll start with a land trust. A land trust is a legal device that allows a person to shield the true ownership of a property. This is mainly a method to attempt to shield properties from being included as assets in case of a law suit. My own personal recommendation is that the properties need to be put into a land trust before you purchase them if you are going to use a land trust at all.

LLCs and Corps are legal business entities. Their purpose is to limit the amount of exposure that you would have from a law suit to the assets of that entity. The recommendations that I have seen say that it is best to limit the assets of a corporation to $50k and to limit the assets of an LLC to $500k. As such, an LLC would be a better choice for ownership of real estate.

Now I will add my disclaimer. I am neither an accountant nor a lawyer and I would recommend that you speak with both about the differences between them.

Wilson