Email Elizabethjoint tenancy
Ways to Hold Title in Sacramento When Buying a Home
Sacramento home buyers should discuss ways to hold title before opening escrow.
Home buyers often give little thought to the ways to hold title. I hear escrow officers ask the question over and over, and watch buyers’ puzzled faces as they grope for answers. How to hold title is something buyers should decide upon about the same time as they receive a lender preapproval letter, but unless their agent brings it up, they might not give it a second thought.
Be aware that Sacramento Realtors are not licensed to practice law, so we can’t advise buyers, unfortunately. It’s a legal question that is best answered by a real estate lawyer. But let’s get real, how many buyers are going to run to their lawyers and pay for this type of advice, even though it’s suggested? Not one.
Here are some of the ways to hold title in California:
- Joint Tenants with Right of Survivorship
- A Married Person, Sole and Separate
- Community Property
- Community Property with Right of Survivorship
- Trust
- Corporation or Partnership
- LLC (limited liability corporation)
Apart from possible tax ramifications, the way a buyer holds title affects transfer, rights of transfer and whether the remaining interest will pass along to the survivor in the event of death. It’s an important consideration and should not be decided upon simply because one form sounds more familiar or because that’s how your parents hold title.
Please do your own research and get legal advice before deciding. Just don’t pick joint tenancy because all your friends pick that option. Community Property with Right of Survivorship is probably the most common that I see buyers leaning toward. It gives you the benefits of survivorship in the event one person dies, the property transfers to the remaining spouse but you can’t sell your interest.
Death Qualifies for a Short Sale
I suspect you’ve landed on my blog with the thought she is NOT going to talk about death and a short sale. But you would be incorrect or maybe you just don’t know me very well yet. I’ll talk about anything I darn well feel like on my blog. If you’re not interested in matters surrounding death, all I’ve got to say is you are going to be very surprised one day. That old grim reaper is hanging around and not just around us old people. You can’t escape it. One day you’re laughing and joking with friends, and the next day, bam, somebody is dead.
You just hope it’s not you.
I haven’t seen very many dead people myself. Once, driving along the Biz 80 freeway in Sacramento, I saw an upside-down Corvette. The windows were open. The driver was still in the car, shirt unbuttoned and this huge stomach was bloated and bare for all the world traveling by to see. I guess it took paramedics a long time to get there. They were probably stuck in a traffic jam on the other side of the road. Because even people on the other side of the road were slowing down to gawk. You don’t want to look but you do. It’s kind of human nature. I felt sorrow and horror for this dead person in the Corvette.
If this guy in the Corvette had a home that was upside down, the same as he was, his joint tenancy partner or tenants in common partner could sell that home as a short sale. Because death qualifies for a short sale. Even if his heirs were not on title to the property, they can use death as a qualifying factor to get rid of the house. Doesn’t matter if it’s Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or which bank is servicing the loan. There is no getting around it, death qualifies for a short sale.
To do a short sale involving a dead person, you need a recorded copy of the death certificate. It might take a while to get the death certificate, especially in Sacramento. I guess it depends on where the person kicked the bucket. If a person died in the hospital, I hear you get a death certificate a lot faster than if you came home and found your ex-husband dead in bed. That’s what clients tell me. I don’t have any first-hand experience myself.
But I do have a lot of first-hand experience selling short sales in Sacramento. I’m a competent and veteran Sacramento real estate agent. I am, in fact, working on two separate short sales this week involving spouses who have passed on. These are different than a strategic short sale or a short sale involving loss of income, for example. There is a lot of grief and bereavement. Pain. People need to talk. I listen. I’m not just in the real estate business. I’m a person, too. If somebody has died in your family and you need to sell that Sacramento home as a short sale, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916 233 6759. I know what to do. Remember, death qualifies for a short sale.
