What is a HUD?

A HUD is a settlement statement document.

The first page you have a summery of the buyers transaction (on the left side) and the sellers (on the right) There are a contract purchase price settlement charges, earnest, taxes, security, rent and prorated.

On the second page you have the itemised brake down of the 1st page.
The buyers pay all the closing cost which are title insurance fee, wire express fee, document preparation fees etc.

Things you should look out for when you are hunting for a house

Make sure you take your notepad and write what you think about the following:

In terms of area:
Overall impression of the suburb
General condition of the buildings
Quality and condition of the cars
Area landscapes
Traffic paters
Quality of business of the area

In terms of building:
Location within area
Lighting
Parking
Ease of access
General condition
Curb conditions
Fits what you are looking for
General condition



Make sure you drive around in different times of the days to notice the difference.

Tip: find out what projects are underway on the area by contacting the city officials and staff.

Transfering your title to your entity:

Once you have formed an asset protection entity its time to transfer the title of the property to the LLC.
You have tho make sure that you:

- Sign and approve the operating agreement.
- Sing the minutes of the 1st meeting
- Issue a membership certificate
- Notify your insurance that your property its under your LLC and not your individual name. This is quite important as in the case of a claim this can be an reason for not paying our. 

What is probate and how can you avoid it?

Probate is the process in which the estate of a deceased person gets resolved. In this process it gets probed that the testator's will is genuine and decides the executor as the personal representative of the estate. It gets interpreted what the decease person wanted to do with his state.
Probate usually takes several months and it can be quite expensive.

Some of the ways to avoid probate in the US are the following:

 -  Execute a living trust.
-  Set up a POD or paid on death designations on bank accounts
- Set up of a TOD transfer on death on brokerage accounts.
- Placing the property in joint tenancies (the person that survives inhalers the other party estate). A life estate deed could be executed and a testator can add a named beneficiary to it.

Note that avoiding probate does not eliminate the estate taxes.
  

Asset Protection in real estate

Asset protection on your real estate its one of the key factors to be able to sleep sound at night. In a country like the US where most of the lawsuits in the world are filed its paramount that your property its well protected in the case something doesn't go as planned.

Here are some key points:

= Insurance: don't t be fooled to believe that with this you are cover, this is just one single step to get your real estate protected. Make sure you are always cover against natural disaster, you don't want to wait until a flood comes to realise that floods was one of the exclusions in your policy.
= Don't do joint tenancies. In the case one of the persons in the tenancies gets suits you might loose everything too..
= Never use a C corporation (you will pay more taxes)
= Only youse a LLC (or TIC Tenancy in common with both parties protected by a LLC)
= Get a living trust (for provate avoidance) and the LLC (for asset protection)

Property Management websites - with interesting articles and more!

National Apartment Association
NAA serves the interest of multifamily housing, owners, managers and suppliers and promotes a high lever of professionalism in this industry.

http://www.naahq.org/Pages/welcome.aspx


Institute of Real Estate Management.
Is dedicated to ethical business practises and maximisation of value in real estate across different type of properties.  Find also interesting articles and more.
http://www.irem.org/

Property management Rating

Here is a great web page to check your property management rating. Make sure that you check how is the rating based on and the amount of complains filed in the last few years. Also note that the bigger the company the more likely to have a disagreement with a landlord.

http://www.bbb.org/atlanta/business-reviews/property-management