Benefits of owning your property through an LLC | General Homesteading Discussion | Forums

Quoted from thread: Town destroys man's home

KVR said
how would you handle this?

A Long Island man returned home from a long trip to find all his possessions — and his home — completely vanished.

Philip Williams, 69, flew to Florida in December 2014 to escape the cold winter and undergo a knee operation.

But when he came back to his West Hempstead homestead in August, all that was left was a grass-covered lot.

“You don’t expect to leave and get surgery and come back to find everything gone. I’m outraged. They shouldn’t be able to do that. This was preventable. It’s unjust and a tremendous disservice to me,” Williams, who is now suing the town, he told CBS News.

Local officials say they made the decision to demolish the home in May after receiving numerous complaints from neighbors that the house, built in 1920, was in extreme disrepair.

more http://nypost.com/20.....-vanished/

So I certainly would never expect such a thing, it really makes me glad that I bought the property as an LLC...

LLC stands for "Limited Liability Corporation". As the name suggests, it adds a layer of protection from personal liability. So for example, let's say my neighbor trespasses again to hunt, shoots himself by accident, then tries to sue me for injuries sustained on my property. He can't. I don't own the property, the LLC owns it and is WAY more difficult to sue because it "Limits Liability".

I did it for anonymity. I've worked in the real estate business as a researcher, so I know how easy it is to look up someone's property ownership, I did it hundreds of times per day at work. Frankly it creeps me out that all a person needs to know is my First and Last name, and then guess what county I might own property in. Suddenly they have my home address.

No thank you.

But now comes the bonus... Let's say I was the man in the article, and the township wanted to tear down my house. They would need to notify the owner, in my case, the LLC. My attorney is set up as the "Registered Agent" of the LLC. They are the only ones that show up on record when you look up the LLC, and notices must be sent to them.

If I was away in another state, the attorney would email me to let me know the town had served notice of their plans to tear my house down. The attorney acts as my Registered Agent for free because they anticipate that if such a notice came, I'd pay them to take care of the matter, which I would.

Immediate legal response, liability protection, and layer of additional privacy protection.

There is a cost involved. I pay the state an annual "Franchise Tax", but I view it as cheap insurance.

LLC's differ from state to state not only in Franchise Tax costs, but in protections. The LLC does not need to be in your home state, you can choose a state that is more favorable in some way like lower Franchise Tax or stronger liability protections.

http://www.nolo.com/.....rders.html

http://www.nolo.com/.....-llcs.html