All Forum Posts by: Jerry W.

@Frank Peraza, these are just opinions, not facts, but I REALLY don't like trusts. there is the cost of creating, the duty to keep things in the trust, and they provide ZERO liability protection. If you form a WY LLC you can have it be anonymous, have a second layer of liability protection, and a second layer of charging order protection. Now in my opinion anonymous investing is vastly over rated, but this method would help. It only costs $100 to form an LLC in filing fees in WY and about $50 per year for your annual filing. You can get a company to be your registered agent for about $25 to $50 a year too. It depends on what you want to spend. Just out of curiosity why do you need anonymity?

@Aaron Christen, one small silver lining perhaps, is that in my experience I usually pay about 1% more for a loan to my LLC than in my personal name.

@Allison Meggison, there is NOT a requirement for a registered agent to tell you who the owner of a company is in Wyoming, in fact I doubt that you could force them to.  As you discovered probably the blind letter approach would be best to be forwarded to the owner.  Wyoming is very private about business.  You are not allowed to find out what property sells for.  While you must fill out forms on what you sell property for, that is to help the assessor determine market values.  Disclosing that information by the assessor is a crime in our state.

After stumbling onto this thread I have to hijack it a bit and speak out.

First @Steven Hamilton II is one of my heroes.  His knowledge on rental accounting is crazy good, I wish he lived closer he would get all of my business, Second if @Natalie Kolodij is endorsed by @Linda Weygant, then she must be good, as I think Linda is amazing good too.  Finally here is @Brandon Hall having written a featured blog post that was dead wrong and taking criticism like a shot between the eyes and owning up to it without blinking.  That is a sign of exceptional character.  Sometimes the folks giving advice on here , like Al Gores brother hehe, are so stupid you wonder why they have survived because they are not smart enough to open a bag of chips to keep from starving, then I run across folks I want to just sit and listen to because I feel like am getting smarter from listening to them.  Thanks for taking the time to post on here and enlighten all of us, especially during hell season for you guys that wont end until April.

Great information.  Now contact the local taxing agency, here it is the assessor and ask what the procedure is to challenge the tax assessment.  Good luck bud.

@Christopher Munn, if you go ahead on your own document everything.  Do the notice in writing, send it certified return receipt requested, send him an email, print our his response, do whatever you feel you need to do, but make sure you can prove in court his violation and your attempts to rectify it.

@David Kramer, I don't know what state you have the property in, but in the state of Wyoming you only have one time of year to challenge property taxes.  I have been mildly successful in challenging some valuations.  You must timely file or you must wait until the following year.  you must have real criteria, not just I budgeted less for these.  What are the comps in your area?  How much did you pay?  How much did you invest in fixing it up?  What are the current sale prices of similar properties near you?  All of these things will be useful if they help your cause.  If their valuation shows many other similar properties selling for the same price you are probably out of luck.  Every state may have different rules, so look them up, they will likely be online.

@Helen Fletch, I really doubt you will take the property away from them with that much equity in it.  The 5% interest is important.  After taxes what would you be able to make from an investment of it?  You have to consider the value of the money if invested in an alternative investment.  If you can only generate 3 or 4% income from the money then leaving it there and just prodding them to make payments might be best.  If you invest and earn 10% from other money you might look at forcing them to pay it off.  Keep in mind the income you earn will be lower because of what you lose from paying taxes.  So if you are earning 5% income off of $500k now after they pay it off you will only have $330K earning income to go to you.  It is too late to do many tax savings.  You might consider buying an income producing property and use depreciation acceleration in order to offset your taxes you have to pay.  Maybe you could even offer to buy the property back if you think it could be an income producer, but it doesn't sound like it makes any money at the moment.  As a final consideration, being worth $700 million sounds dam impressive, but often folks can be property poor if it is not generating income.  So maybe a $1million house can rent for $8K a month, but 10 $100K houses will rent for $1,500 a month each, one earns $96K a year gross, the other earns $150K per year and has half the taxes because it is not in CA.  Just some thoughts.

There is a lot more we need to know.  What is the interest rate?  What is the property worth?  How likely is the buyer to be able to pay your mortgage off?  Will your your taxes be any different getting payments every year or all at once?  What shape is the property in?  What have you done to try to collect the amount past due?  etc.

@Christopher Munn, I hate to state the obvious, but read the contract carefully.  You may be obligated to give notice of items you are repairing before you spend the money.  In any event the repair must be done, you have covered it.  next have an attorney read the contract and give you his opinion about charging the seller for the repairs.  Laws differ from state to state and a local attorney should know the local laws.  Finally without reading the actual contract the advice from us is only a guess.  The actual terms will control.