6 ms·

You shouldn’t be able to buy property using an LLC. Real people’s legal names should be required on every transaction. If you’re later found to be facilitating

• lotsofpulp 5y ago
  That is not feasible. What is feasible is simply making the owners of companies visible via a search on a government website.
  • mjmahone17 5y ago
    Why is requiring each property to have a named, non-LLC owner not feasible?
    • monkeywork 5y ago
      who should be marked down as the property owner of Apple's campus?
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • fzzzy 5y ago
        Tim Apple
        • kube-system 5y ago
          He doesn't own Apple. The owners of some ~17 billions shares of AAPL own Apple.
          • fzzzy 5y ago
            It was a joke. Tim Apple is not a person that exists.
    • akomtu 5y ago
      How would any largish business buy office buildings? I'm sure beneficiaries don't want personal liability.
    • micromacrofoot 5y ago
      I had to buy my house under a trust to avoid a stalker because the ownership records are public. It's still possible to find me if you search the trust name (but you need to know the name first). It's been enough obscurity so far. I loathe the idea of public records required to show my name.
    • mashmac2 5y ago
      Businesses don't have one owner. Think about all of the properties that a company like Apple owns. Now, if you're specifically referring to residential properties, maybe.... although there are lots of mixed-use properties, and ownership of land can be separate from the house that's on it, etc
      • fock 5y ago
        so why do these businesses have to own their land then? Just let them only lease it...
        • kube-system 5y ago
          That might "solve" the Apple scenario but it's hardly universal. Many businesses lien or deal in land. For instance, mortgages as we know them would not exist without liens.
      • HWR_14 5y ago
        Since he said "non-LLC owner", it pretty clearly is trying to tie ownership to a single (or married) real person owner. They probably intended to limit this to residential properties.
    • mindslight 5y ago
      First, it destroys the entire mechanism of LLC protection. Second, privacy is a human right. You should not be forced to list yourself in a publicly accessible database to own real estate. Needing to pay a trustee to avoid this is bad enough. Registering the beneficial owners of entities privately with the government is as far as makes sense. Of course then we run into the problem that government isn't terribly incentivized to do enough analysis to catch the large scale evaders.
      • munk-a 5y ago
        > Second, privacy is a human right. You should not be forced to list yourself in a publicly accessible database to own real estate. Needing to pay a trustee to avoid this is bad enough. I think there is a core of truth here - individual persons should not be forever tied to business they've worked for. Everyone should always have the right to "walk away". However - while you're executing actions on behalf of a business you should not have a right to privacy of your actions - you are actively executing them and if you're doing shady or illegal things that should be knowable. Freedom of speech doesn't free you from the consequences of that speech - and I think it's unreasonable to demand to be free from the consequences of your actions. I do whole-heartedly agree with your final point though - it's the beneficiaries that should be on the hook as the first point of contact - agents of the company may be shielded by the company but the beneficiaries should achieve that shield by making themselves clear points of contact.
        • mindslight 5y ago
          > while you're executing actions on behalf of a business you should not have a right to privacy of your actions Generally you don't. Most states require you to publicly declare managers of LLCs, and trustees of real estate. > it's the beneficiaries that should be on the hook as the first point of contact Nowhere did I suggest that beneficiaries should be points of contact, or otherwise available in a public database.
    • danans 5y ago
      Because the primary function of an LLC is limiting financial (not criminal) liability of the owners, and the liability of the directly named owner would not be limited. Only 4 states in the US allow anonymous LLCs anyways: Delaware, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The problem is that even with owner's identities, unless you follow the trail of money very far, it's hard to know whether the capital is clean or not.
      • oh_sigh 5y ago
        Saying only 4 states allow it is mostly meaningless when one of those states is the state that by far registers the most companies per year.
        • munk-a 5y ago
          It's not meaningless - but it is good to observe that there's a bit of a tragedy of the commons when it comes to state-wise incorporation requirements. The weakest link effectively dictates for the rest of the nation. Delaware has incredibly low incorporation fees, taxes and disclosure requirements - and thus every other state just has to shrug and take it due to federal control of limitations on interstate commerce.
      • vmception 5y ago
        there are many of states and entity types where the owner/member/director/principle disclosure requirement happens a long time later you can form companies, do the transaction, dissolve the company or let the state dissolve it automatically eventually the record of the title the stays as is, regardless who (or what) the property ownership passed through to but real estate aside, I know people do political contributions this way
        • danans 5y ago
          I agree that LLCs can be abused. The answer to this is stronger enforcement of anti-money-laundering, not preventing LLCs from owning property. But increasing investigation and enforcement of money laundering laws requires the political will of state prosecutors, who are usually elected officials. Only recently have prosecutors willing to actively go after this stuff (like AG Letitia James in NY). LLCs have a useful function (allowing business that limit their owners personal exposure to the business's liabilities, and vice versa).
  • warrenm 5y ago
    >What is feasible is simply making the owners of companies visible via a search on a government website I'll help you out: the list you want is more-or-less the population of the country
  • poulsbohemian 5y ago
    In the two states where I do business it's fairly easy to discover information about the ownership of an LLC or other corporate entity. As a real estate agent I do it all the time using publicly available sources.
• warrenm 5y ago
  > You shouldn’t be able to buy property using an LLC That's ... an "interesting" view How do you propose companies purchase anything if you won't let them buy it without using "[r]eal people's legal names" "on every transaction"?
  • ordinaryradical 5y ago
    As many others have noted, I’m talking about residential property only. Should have been clearer. Money Laundering with commercial property is no doubt happening as well—no quick and easy solutions there—but faceless LLCs driving the real estate boom in single family homes is easily correctable.
    • someguydave 5y ago
      faceless LLCs are not driving the real estate boom. very easy government backed loans and piles of government stimulus money are driving the boom
      • atatatat 5y ago
        Both.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• shagmin 5y ago
  Then you might just find a trustee's name in its place rather than the person that actually paid for the property. At least with LLCs you can usually lookup the owners of the LLC.
• commandlinefan 5y ago
  That breaks (perfectly legitimate) REIT's, though.
• nullc 5y ago
  ... and made life much easier for stalkers, extortionists, and kidnappers. I suppose you'll be posting read-only email log in credentials for all of us too, so we can all make sure you're not doing anything illegal there.
  • washadjeffmad 5y ago
    Exactly! Imagine the mayhem these fools would cause by putting the names and addresses of every person with a telephone number in a freely searchable directory. For my safety, I only want governments and organizations with unlimited legal resources to be able to divine private information like who owns taxable property or the people who own the companies who own the companies who own the congresspeople who oh no.
• wmf 5y ago
  The US Corporate Transparency Act passed earlier this year requires LLCs to report their beneficial owners to FinCEN.
  • smokelegend 5y ago
    That act only goes into full effect 2024. Also worth mentioning exemptions were created, it's only a matter of time before some lawyer/accountant creates new methods that exploit those exemptions. Most notably churches and charities. And the cat and mouse game continues.
• poulsbohemian 5y ago
  So... here's a wrinkle for you... unless you are a megacorp, a lender is generally going to want you to purchase in your name anyway, as that way your personal assets are on the line. At a minimum if you are purchasing through an LLC, your terms are not going to be as good as what you would get personally. This leaves out cash transactions though, where there's no lender involved who would have a KYC requirement. In my state of residence, there is actually a clause whereby you can purchase a property in your personal name and transfer it into the name of an LLC - because there are a whole slew of additional (legitimate) reasons as a landlord or commercial owner why you would want the property not in your personal name.
  • nly 5y ago
    The UK recently passed laws that require land (property) registration to include real names, even if the property is owned by a limited company. Also, most mortgages made to companies are backed some sort of Personal Guarantee by a director.
    • poulsbohemian 5y ago
      This might be an English-to-English translation problem, given that we have related but different systems of law... what I'm arguing above is that we defacto have this already. If a property is purchased in the name of an LLC, it doesn't take me any more time to find the registration and contact info than it does for me to find the human owner. In fact, in the two states I do business I'd argue it's easier because there will be more information available about a registered entity than about some John / Jane Doe. As for a guarantee by a human director... well, yes, I guess that's my point - any mortgage company is going to want personal guarantees so it's a kind of self-policing system. Where this gets weird is when you have an LLC owned by another LLC or some other kind of corporate entity, where there really aren't humans involved. And as I originally noted, cash transaction are an entirely different matter (and it can be eye opening just how many properties are purchased with cash)