Mark and Matt,
Thank you for all of the information that you have provided on the podcast. It has definitely helped us in our journey through the small business ownership maze.
My partner is a realtor, and I am a Mortgage Originator. The realtor partner purchased an investment property (loan and title are solely in her name). After closing, the investment property was transferred into an LLC (LLC owned solely in her name as well). We have no plans to get married or have children in the future. We do not yet have a revocable living trust but based on what I have learned from listening to your show, that should probably be our next move. I was not able to originate this loan on the investment property due to conflicts of interest / co-mingling of funds, but we would like to use this strategy in the future with the realtor partner as the purchaser and the mortgage originator partner as the lending agent to maximum income and tax strategy (REPS). To do this, it seems that most lenders will require that the realtor partner’s assets / income be separate from the lender partners. It seems to me that If the revocable trust holds all the assets, that will provide estate planning as well as another layer of liability/privacy protection, but will it cause the same conflict of interest / co-mingling issue if we are 50/50 holders of the trust? I’m sure we are missing some things and it’s certainly possible that there may be other strategies that would work better for us that we are not aware of. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again.