Friday, November 23, 2007

Real Estate Asset Protection

The goals of Real Estate Asset Protection are:

Keep the ownership of the real estate anonymous. Anonymous Panama Corporations and Anonymous Panama Foundations do this extremely well; in fact better than any other jurisdiction we are aware of. Anonymous ownership of real estate reduces your profile as a target for lawsuits and collection attorneys can not go after something they do not know even exists.

If a structure of Anonymity is not practical the next best solution is to take away the attachable equity through the use of lawful mortgages and other encumbrances filed on the property locally by anonymous Panama Corporations or Foundations.

You should only use a Law Firm for asset protection so you have attorney client privilege. The law firm used should be out of the reach of the court where the real estate is located. If a lawyer in your country forms an offshore structure for you what are you going to do when he winds up in the lawsuit with you - defrauding creditors would be one possible allegation, or if he has the judge order him to open up his records concerning you. If you felt the courts, laws, judges, lawyers etc. in your country were fair and equitable you wouldnt be reading this. Dont make the mistake of using a law firm in another country which also has flawed privacy laws. The courts in his country will probably cooperate with the courts in your country.

As a last resort but still a valuable one the asset protection structure should present itself to your pursuing financial adversaries as so burdensome, onerous, confusing, time consuming and expensive that they will accept a settlement from you for a mere fraction of the debt in question. This is an often overlooked positive outcome that lets you keep your property and settle the debts for pennies on the dollar, sort of a bankruptcy without going bankrupt.

Detailed Information Follows:

Today many people in different countries are very worried about their real estate being lost due to court actions leaving them homeless or without their real estate portfolio. Real estate is not portable and unfortunately is one of the first things aggressive collection attorneys go after. Since the ownership of real estate in many jurisdictions is open and transparent, the real estate ownership rolls are often used to determine if a person has enough wealth to go after in a civil lawsuit, in other words it flags you as a target. Real estate ownership records are also used to accomplish identity theft since a lot can be learned about the owner from the public records like when the mortgages were taken out, from which company and for how much, the full names and addresses of the owners, etc. This information is then used combined with other public databases like drivers licenses, phone and utility records etc. to create a profile of the victim which is used to steal their identity. Lack of privacy is invasive and also encourages litigation and criminal activity.

So how do you protect your real estate in as anonymous manner as possible? Some sample strategies are briefly described below.

Mortgages:

One real estate asset protection strategy is to borrow against the real estate using mortgages or trust deeds. Typically in most jurisdictions the borrowed money is not taxable as income since it must be repaid. Usually one can borrow up to 80% of the value of the house. Collection attorneys will not spend money to go after a house with 20% or less available equity. This is also true concerning government collection agencies. It is felt that auctions in the courtroom or on the steps of the courthouse will not bring in more than 80% of the appraised value since these auction buyers are looking for a substantial discount. One important point to be considered is the collection attorney may want to know where the borrowed money from the mortgage is to see if it is within his reach like in the country concerned. If the money is offshore they rarely will pursue it. They are not lawyers outside of their country and must retain local lawyers who usually smell deep pockets and charge high fees for this type of service which will rarely ever has a happy ending for them. The country where the money is may be hostile to such collection actions as is very often the case and makes it hard for these cases to be pursued. These countries often dismiss these cases for lack of venue or jurisdiction. Also the collection attorney from your country often has to post a cash bond to cover court costs if they lose which again deters such actions. The potential problem with the above scenario is now you have a mortgage on property that may have been free and clear. You need to go through a credit check and reveal personal information much of it will wind up in public or semi-public databases like credit agencies databases. Now you have to make the payments and pay the interest rates. There are usually penalties involved if you terminate the lease early. Many of these loans have variable interest rates which can go up and now you have a blood sucking Mortgage Company on your property title. There is a better way.

Your own Mortgage Company:

There is nothing wrong with borrowing money from an anonymous Panama Bearer Share Corporation that to protect its interests places a mortgage on your property. You basically write a mortgage through your corporation to yourself to record on the title of the property you wish to protect. This requires a lawyer in the city where the real estate is to advise you as to how the mechanics and local laws will work when recording your mortgage and pertaining to it. You may need to fund an escrow in the area where the real estate is in some countries to validate the mortgage, but there are work arounds for this as well. After the escrow closes the loan is recorded against the property tying up the equity in the property reducing your profile as a target greatly. You could make the loan at more than 80% of the value like 99% if you so desired. The corporation or an additional corporation could be used to make a second or even a third mortgage. Of course your borrowed money is not taxable and but you do need to make payments with interest to your own corporation. This is a real loan. If one researches you or your real estate they will see encumbered real estate and someone thinking of suing you may think you are not worth the time and expense which is one of our goals. If someone does try to levy or auction your real property they will have to pay the mortgage off from any auction or sale proceeds and if the amount of the mortgage (LTV- Loan to Value) is at least 80% of the appraised value a sale for enough money to pay off the mortgage will be extremely unlikely thus they will not bother spending the legal fees and auction fees. Auction buyers are price buyers, not people looking for a certain home in a certain school district etc. Remember the Panama Corporation owning the mortgage has no listed owner anywhere so it is impossible for ownership to be looked up by a potential financial enemy sizing you up. In any event the obstacle of the mortgage makes normal collection actions immensely more difficult for them if they should try to pierce through the corporate veil. Panama corporate veils do not pierce. They do not know this is your mortgage and that you own the corporation that wrote the mortgage and the only way of finding out would be to take your deposition and ask you. Well for all they know you dont own the corporation, perhaps you did and transferred the ownership, or they might assume you would lie and they could not catch you in your deception, or they may assume it is owned by a friend or relative or whatever else comes into their mind. You are not responsible for their thoughts; this is something they do all on their own. One thing to be perfectly clear on is now collection costs for your financial adversary has now gone up, way up and the person going after your assets has some decisions to make as to how much money they want to spend. The collection attorney is going to be anything but encouraging because he is now in an environment that he does not understand welcome to the jurisdiction of Panama Counselor. He is going to tell your financial enemy that more money is required to pursue this, in the back of his mind not really wanting to pursue this and if he does have to do it he is going to want to get paid big time. When lawyers do not want to do something they charge a lot. Now if the attorney gets into it and finds out the corporation ownership is non-transparent and soon discovers that Panama has tight bank secrecy etc. he will become more frustrated and this means higher fees for your financial enemy. What will the other side do if a Panama Private Interest Foundation owns the Corporation and you can legally say you do not own the Corporation? Panama Foundations really have no owner so you could also say you do not own the Foundation. Welcome to Panama Mr. Collection Attorney. You are not responsible for providing the other side ownership details of a foundation or corporation that is their problem. You can say you do not own the corporation or foundation and that is where it stops as far as you are concerned. Folks when they see a Panama Corporation or a Panama Foundation on the mortgage they are more than likely to drop it right there because they know they are spinning their wheels and will more than likely never get anywhere and spend a ton of money getting nowhere. Remember the collection attorney doesnt deal with Panama Asset Protection scenarios everyday, or even every decade for most of them. He will see things as a brick wall, blind alley, etc and not know what to do. Remember the attorney that is doing the collection can be sued by his client for frivolously spending his clients money and running up a big bill when chances for a positive return are most unlikely.

Line of Credit Mortgage:

There are other ways of protecting real estate assets where no actual funding of a mortgage is required. A line of credit is set up through a Panama Financial Institution that records a trust deed based on the size of the line of credit. This is very similar to what finance companies in the USA do with home equity lines of credit. This also requires you to retain a local attorney in the area where the real estate is located to ensure that proper papers are filed with the local government registry. The line of credit need not be drawn down upon, yet it can still be used to protect your real estate equity, or boat equity, car equity, airplane equity, art collection equity etc. The line of credit can be cancelled at any time by you and within 30 days the mortgage on the property will be released. There are safeguards put in place to ensure you have control over this.

Real Estate Asset Protection Annuity:

Another way to protect real estate or other assets is through the use of an annuity. Basically the anonymous Panama Corporation or anonymous Panama Foundation would receive your real estate or other assets in return for an annuity. The annuity pays you a certain specified sum of money monthly, quarterly or yearly. The money can be paid into a secure Panama Bank account even in the name of another Panama Foundation which is acquiring and protecting assets for you to retire on and for the eventual benefit of your beneficiaries. So if you were asked in a lawsuit in your home country why you transferred the real estate to this Panama Corporation and what consideration did you receive for the transfer, you reply the transfer was done in return for an annuity of so much money per month for as long as you live, or 5 years or whatever you decide for a term. Now they say where is this money paid thinking about garnishing it. You say into a Panama bank that my Panama Private Interest Foundation maintains think dead end for the collection attorney. If the sum is paid monthly the collection effort is so costly compared to the reward you could even have the annuity money paid into a bank account in your home country. They are not going to go do a new collection action each month, and if they did well you could change banks, or use a Panama Bank and withdraw the money with an ATM card.

WARNING

It is common to see entities selling asset protection structures using trusts and other vehicles that are located in the countries that have done away with privacy and fairness in the courts. These are the countries where they judges do what they want, judgments awarded are staggering high, the lawyers run legal bills up on the people until they can no longer defend themselves because they are broke, etc. If you own property in such a country and use an attorney who is also in this country or another country like this you are at serious risk. Why. For a lot of reasons.

Ronald Edwards is a researcher, with years of experience in finances and real estate.Mortgage Leads

Are You Receiving Your Daily Free Mortgage Marketing Lessons?

Did you know that you have access to a series of free marketing lessons delivered to your postal mailbox and your email inbox every single day of the year? That's right, every day you receive a wealth of valuable marketing information that could improve your mortgage business dramatically.

If you're like most people, you are ignoring this valuable learning opportunity. In fact, you're probably throwing away your junk mail immediately and deleting emails without even looking at what's being offered and how it's offered.

As far as email goes...most of us sign up for mailing lists in order to access information. We understand that the price for that information is giving up an email address. The result is a series of subsequent marketing emails from the person providing the goodies. When we get those emails, we might read them or we might just delete them as we go about our daily business.

Whether it's a direct mail piece or an electronic email delivered to your inbox...what you should be doing is reading each of them very carefully. No, I'm not saying that every product offer you receive deserves your purchase via credit card! Far from it! What I'm arguing is that each of those offers is a free object lesson in marketing.

Read them. Analyze them. What is the person sending them doing right? Is the letter/flier or email a good one or a bad one? Is it effective or does it turn you off? Does it get your attention? Does it make you want to buy? Would it make others want to buy? What can you learn from it?

Pay careful attention to the mailings from successful marketers who are recognized as top performers in their fields. Learn from their direct mail and emails. In many cases, major advertising agencies have put these offers together at a tremendous cost.

I'm not suggesting that you read every piece of spam sent to you, but you should pay close attention to the opt-in mailings you receive. Even if you aren't interested in the product behind the mailing, the text of that copy itself can be extremely valuable to you as a mortgage professional and a marketer.

Everyday I receive over three hundred emails. Many of these are a result of my opt-ins to subscriptions, newsletters, and email courses. Some are just plain spam. I don't use any email filters because they also inadvertently filter out the good emails I want to read. The spammers will always win the battle with programmers that design our email filters. Never do I miss an important email because it was placed in a junk folder somewhere automatically.

I try to handle each email once. It is either deleted immediately or, if it is a result of my opt-in and covers topics like Real Estate, Mortgage and Finance, Internet Marketing, or Customer/Client stuff, I do a speed read and save it using the sender's name as the folder name. I don't save the emails in an Outlook folder...instead; I set up an email folder on an external disc drive and save each in their own file. If the email requires my action, it's flagged and left in the inbox until completed. It's then saved and the original message deleted.

You'll be surprised how quickly you can review your junk mail and email and benefit as a result. Subscribe to as much as you can and read them. You'll learn how to better market your mortgage products, how to refine your advertising copy, and much more. It's a completely free resource that deserves better treatment than a quick trip to the trash can or the delete key!

Tom Domin is the author of "101 Ways to Originate Mortgages" and publisher of "Tom's Mortgage Tips" a twice monthly Mortgage Newsletter geared for Mortgage Professionals. Put your mortgage career on the fast track and sign-up for FREE at http://www.MortgageMarketingToolKit.com/

Distractions - Use Them Wisely

We all easily succumb to distractions. When we need an excuse to not do something we know we need to do, there they are. Distractions are the very things that keep us from truly living our lives to the fullest. However, if we use distractions as tools, things can become very different, very fast.

We use distractions as tools to help us not do what we know we need to do. They temporarily relieve stress, but what we fail to remember is that because we acquiesced to the distraction, we gained two very important things. One, we gain the ability to beat ourselves up and the ability to add more stress to our day. Doesn't seem like this is something we gain, does it? Yet we actually long and look for distractions. We expend much energy searching for them, and we get real good at it, really fast. Let's look at how we can turn this around.

Just look at how interesting the synonyms for distraction are: interruption, disruption, commotion, disturbance, diversion, entertainment, hobby, and pastime. If we just look at how these can be depleting, we can see where distractions lead us. The distraction interrupts us from a current task, or one we're about to begin. The interruption disrupts that place of feeling stuck, so there seems to be movement because we're doing something, different but we're doing something. Then the disruption leads us to commotion, mainly within our thoughts and feelings, which then leads to us to becoming disturbed by having given into the distraction. This disturbance then moves us to justify our lack of action by telling ourselves we needed to be entertained because we were stuck. This sense of entertainment can easily become a hobby we more and more easily want to take part in. Then the hobby of being distracted becomes a pastime, thereby passing the time to our detriment. Interesting progression, isn't it?

An interesting distraction just came up as I write this article. A sentence ago, a jackhammer in front of my neighbor's house, closest to the window I write near, started screaming its presence. My mind went into so many other things I could do rather than stay where I am, listening to this annoying noise; I could step into the other side of the house where I could paint undisturbed by the jarring noise, do the laundry, leave the house and go shopping, a multitude of possibilities came so easily to distract me from the flow of my writing. Do I succumb? No, I simply choose to use the distraction as a tool to increase my focus so dulled the sound a bit by turning up the music. It may have been easier to start painting or doing anything other than completing the task at hand but I chose to allow myself to use this distraction to go into a deeper focus and continue my work. In using the distraction as a tool, consciously, I brought myself to a deeper and stronger connection to the joy of writing.

The point of this is that we can use anything, anything, that comes our way to step toward what we want, even distractions. Use the distractions that come to you as a tool, a tool to become adjust your focus, to strengthen the feeling of what you do want or as a pause to enjoy a moment or two of visualizing actually feeling that you enjoy what you want right now; picture yourself at your best - and doing this will build your confidence and begin attracting to you what you want. Feel the goose bumps of living the great life you imagine for yourself.

When you use your distractions as a tool, you will become more aware of what habit of thought is trying to draw you away from your dream. There is a duality in virtually everything and when we recognize this, we can use what we once thought was a wall in our way as a stepping stone toward what we want to be experiencing. Use your negative thoughts and feelings when they come to you as places to start moving toward positively focusing on good feeling thoughts, feelings and actions; these become your stepping stones.

Enjoy noticing the distractions in your life as a tool to focus more consciously how you can transform them into the stepping stones that lead you across the bridge from where you are to where you want to be.

Gabriele Reign is a Visionary/Mentor/Coach and Ebook Author of dynamics that guide you to create and manifest the life you've always imagined for yourself. Come visit: http://www.DynamicLifeNow.comMortgage Leads

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