Real Estate Investment

Archive for the ‘Property Titles’ Category

Joint tenancy is one of the most common type of Real Estate titles and refers to joint ownership. If two people own one piece of Real Estate property in a joint tenancy agreement then the owners are called joint tenants. 

What does joint tenancy mean?

Joint tenancy means both or all the owners have undivided interest in the Real Estate property. All joint tenant owners are equal owners of the property. 

What does undivided interest mean? Undivided interest means that each joint tenant owns the entire property and has equal rights to use all of the property. A joint tenant cannot sell their interest in the tenancy without destroying the joint tenancy.

Seizing a Joint tenancy property

Real Estate property held as a joint tenancy cannot be seized easily. This is because there is ownership held by another tenant. 

However is it possible for the courts to change the way Real Estate title is held to another form of tenancy such as tenant in common. Tenant in common interest are held separately so a creditor can then just take over a tenant in common ’s individual ownership.

A piece of Real Estate is always owned by someone, an organization, a business or an agency. The legal owner of the Real Estate has the legal right to the property and the property title is in his/her name. When buying Real Estate, the legal property title matters a great deal because even if you pay money for a property, if the property title is not in your name, then you don’t own the property.

When investing in Real Estate, investors will have to deal with checking out the property title to make sure that when he/she invests he/she will have a clean title of the property. Finding out later that someone else has the legal title to the property is a nightmare.

Property title is how Real Estate investors want to hold the Real Estate title. Holding property title is different from using a business structure to hold Real Estate. If a Real Estate investor uses a structure, the issue of holding property title has changed, as it becomes a case of how the investor wants to hold ownership in the Real Estate property. Below are common property titles. Before buying any Real Estate, the buyer or invest should get a title insurance. There is a need for title insurance in case the property title is ever disputer after purchase.

Joint Tenancy	Property title is held as one.
Joint Tenancy with rights of survivorship (JWROS)	When one tenant dies, the property title automatically passes to the other tenant.
Tenants in Common	Property title is held separately.
Community Property	Property title for married couples.
Land Trust	Property title held in the name of a trust.

See also, the Benefits of Torrens System.