L.A. real estate news and insights.
Name your trust whatever you want... Banana Trust... #LakeShow Trust... whatever you can think of.
Then when it comes time to buy a property, purchase the home under the trust name.
By doing that, the owner on record will show up as the name of your trust, and not your legal name.
This works if you want to buy under your LLC name as well.
Did you know that when you buy a home, you don't have to put the title of the property in your name?
If you have a living trust set up, you can buy the home under the name of the trust.
For example, if the name of your #trust is "Banana Family Trust", and you buy the home under your trust, the owner’s name on the title will appear as "Banana Family Trust" and not your legal name.
This also works if you buy the home under a #LLC.
Use this hack if you want to keep the purchase of your home a secret.
As soon as escrow opens up on a property, the buyer has to wire over their deposit money.
The deposit is typically 3% of the purchase price of the home.
This 3% is held by the escrow company.
They hold on to the money just in case the buyer breaches the contract and the buyer and seller go to an arbitrator to decide who the money should be awarded to.
If the buyer backs out of the deal because of one of their contingencies (inspection, appraisal, loan), and they are within their contingency period, then the buyer gets their deposit back without any problems.
But if the buyer backs out of the deal, and all the contingencies have already been removed, that's when the seller can come after the buyer's deposit for damages they incurred.
An arbitrator will hear both sides of the story and ultimately decide who gets to keep the deposit money.
When buying a home, your offer will have a few contingencies written in the purchase agreement.
Here is 1 example of a contingency:
The purchase of the home is contingent upon the home passing your inspections.
If the home doesn't pass your inspections within your inspection contingency period, you can back out of the deal and get your 3% deposit back.
However, once you have removed all of your contingencies, you can't back out of the deal just because you wake up one day and decide you no longer want to buy the home.
If you do that, the buyers could come after your 3% deposit as damages.
Always remember, changing your mind about the purchase of a property is not a contingency.
Get your calculators out!
Let’s say your home is 2,000 square feet and you want to sell it for $1,000,000.
To figure out your home’s price per square foot at that selling price is easy.
Plug into the calculator 1,000,000 (the asking price of the home) and divide it by 2,000 (the square footage of the home).
That equation equals 500 ($500 per square foot for the home).
Therefore, if your 2,000 square foot home sells at $1,000,000, the price per square foot for your home is $500.
Original asking price: $4,750,000
Sold price: $4,250,000
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After being on the market for only 25 days, the owner of this #StudioCity home decided to accept a offer that was $500,000 below asking price.
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Do you think the owner was too quick to accept such a low offer... or should the owner have kept the home on the market a little longer in hopes of getting more money?
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Comment "accept" or "wait".
The buyers of this #Glendale home had been searching for a property for 3 years.
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Their agent put in several offers on their behalf, but they could not get the job done.
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My past client and friend referred them over to me. The buyers came by my office in the morning for my "Buyer Orientation" meeting.
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This is where I take them through the entire purchase process, from beginning to end.
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In the afternoon I showed them 3 properties. They fell in love with one and immediately decided to put in an offer.
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After a little negotiating with the seller, my clients got the home for $1,075,000. The sellers original asking price was $1,250,000.
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3 years of searching with another agent... and in 1 day I found them their home.
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I hate to toot my own horn... but... TOOT TOOT!
Original asking price: $2,399,000
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Sold price: $1,800,000
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Is a backyard important to you?
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This #Burbank home does not have much of a backyard and still demanded the million dollar price tag.
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If a small yard is a dealbreaker for you, comment below "dealbreaker".
