While you are busy building your real estate portfolio, making investments and earning your passive income, it’s important to remember to raise the drawbridge and protect your future income. You should work with experienced professionals that understand the real estate investment business. Please note that this article is for informational purposes, not financial or legal advice.
As a Fort Worth real estate investor, you must understand how to protect your assets to avoid seeing your investments slip through your fingers. Public records list personal assets and provide information that could make you a lawsuit target. So enacting a strategy to protect yourself from the long arm of creditor claims is essential. As a landlord, you can separate your business and personal assets through an asset protection plan and take steps to limit your risk on individual properties. While nothing is foolproof, these steps are worth the effort. So read on as we explore what Fort Worth real estate investors need to know about asset protection.
Landlord Insurance
As a Fort Worth real estate investor, it’s important that you understand what your liabilities are when it comes to securing the protection of your most valuable asset – your investment property and any tenants or guests that may be in danger. In order to safeguard yourself against lawsuits stemming from injuries or accidents on your property, there are a few steps you can take:
Keep up-to-date insurance policies – It’s best to have an insurance policy that protects you from potential claims filed by third parties (tenants and their guests) due to injuries or accidents in cases where you might be considered legally responsible for their damages. However, insurance policies aren’t always foolproof – so it’s vital that you keep your policies updated and follow their guidelines to take advantage of the coverage they provide.
LLC
A limited liability company or an LLC is a legal business entity that is best used by holding an individual property in the LLC and paying the mortgage and operating expenses. Investors may place other asset classes within the LLC as well. Depending on your income level and the total value of holdings, it may be best to group properties under one LLC. LLCs shield personal assets from business debts and help you avoid double taxation. A complete understanding of these steps to protect the investment for your heirs is something Fort Worth real estate investors need to know about asset protection.
Trusts
Trusts serve as a depository to pass on assets to beneficiaries and protect their anonymity from peering eyes, another part of asset protection that Fort Worth real estate investors need to know. As the trust’s creator, individuals can hold an ownership interest in an LLC to avoid probate, have full power with the ability to change the terms, or entirely revoke the trust. A married couple’s trust has the potential to save beneficiaries nearly a million dollars in estate taxes.
Land Trusts
Land trusts are exclusive to real estate and mortgages or notes; this is another area of asset protectionFort Worth real estate investors need to know well. Land trusts also provide anonymity and avoid probate and certain liability protections. These organizations take authority or ownership of an investment property at your request as the owner and manage the property on behalf of the owner’s interests as a living trust while the owner is alive.
Real Estate Investment Business
Successful real estate investments can grow great wealth to pass on to your heirs. First, however, it would be best if you understood that investing in real estate is a business and requires dedication, thereby ensuring the long-term value of the holdings in your portfolio for your beneficiaries. Building and maintaining a healthy portfolio means you must know your market, understand the shifts and phases of current market values and be selective about the location of your investments. Investors should interact in the Fort Worth real estate market daily to keep tabs on market trends and local changes that affect investments. At StrykCam Real Estate Investors, our professional buyers understand that performing due diligence and running the numbers on each investment requires a reliable team with the mindset of investors. The professional buyers at StrykCam Real Estate Investors have spent years networking among like-minded professionals from every walk of the real estate industry to build the best team in the business.
The professional buyers at StrykCam Real Estate Investors are seasoned experts who built a career investing in the local Fort Worth real estate and know the market intimately. At StrykCam Real Estate Investors, we are passionate about helping our investors earn the highest possible returns on their investments and live out their retirement, enjoying their golden years on the cash flow earned through their passive income. At StrykCam Real Estate Investors, we have an in-house team to handle everything an investor needs. Working with a professional buyer from StrykCam Real Estate Investors makes it easy for investors like you to achieve your asset protection goals. Let the pros at StrykCam Real Estate Investors help you find the right location for your next investment or 1031 exchange property. Don’t forget to ask about our inventory of the best available investment properties in Fort Worth, steadily updated due to our vast connections in every facet of the local real estate industry. Call StrykCam Real Estate Investors at (817) 409-4235.