Minnesota Real Estate Investors Association, Inc.

I know you have heard about land trusts and you know that you should be using them. But I know you and you haven’t gotten around to using them yet. You believe that land trusts are too complicated and you just haven’t had time to learn and completely understand them, but you will get around to it one of these days.

Trusts have been around for centuries and there are tools that the rich use regularly to protect their assets. land trusts are a very special type of Trust that was created to protect your real estate investments, whether you are a landlord who holds real estate for the long term or a wholesaler flipper who only owns the property for 5 minutes.

There are several reasons why people use land trusts, but the most important one to me is the Privacy. No one knows what I currently own or what I have owned in the past and that is comforting to me to know that no one will ever be able to find all my assets if they get the bug to sue me for any frivolous reasons. 
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Just a couple of weeks ago, I did a class on land trusts. This is one of those subjects that everyone wants to learn about, but most people never get around to using. There are all kinds of excuses as to why they haven’t done a Land Trust yet, but I think the biggest reason is that most people just think that it is too much trouble and that nothing will happen to them. That is until something actually does happen to them.

For example, just the other day, one of those students called and need some help. He needed to put his multi-family rental property into a land trust. He was a little frantic and had a sense of urgency about it. When we asked him what was going on, he proceeded to tell us a story that I have heard many times before.

Just a couple of days after the Land Trust Class, a tenant fell on the sidewalk. Now she wasn’t hurt at the time, but over the last week, she has been calling the landlord and complaining about her neck, she thinks she has whiplash. Having that feeling in the bottom of his gut, he decided to call his insurance agent and report the incident, just in case the tenant got worse and decided to make a claim. That is when the insurance agent kindly informed the landlord that he did not have an active insurance policy on the property. The policy lapsed over the holidays and the landlord had not realized this at the time. Money was not the issue, the holidays where. He had the cancellation
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This seems to be the toughest subject for investors to understand, especially new investors.

What is 'Subject To'? Here is a section from the Purchase Agreement I use that talks about encumbrances and marketable title:

When you buy a property and take over the existing mortgages and start making the payments directly to the bank, you have bought the house 'Subject To' the existing mortgage.

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