Trusts: Investor Land Trusts in Texas

There are many kinds of trusts and most of them can be adapted to hold real estate, whether investment property or homestead. The difference between types of trusts revolves around their intended purpose, so one needs to be clear about goals before setting out to utilize a land trust. Is the trust being used to acquire and flip property? Is anonymity a concern? Or is the primary purpose the transfer of property to a credit-impaired borrower? And what about duration—short term versus long term?

In Texas, a “trust may be created for any purpose that is not illegal” (Prop. Code Sec. 112.031). The scope of this article is limited to investment-oriented living trusts (meaning trusts formed during the lifetimes of the participants) for the purpose of holding investment real estate. Testamentary trusts, which take effect upon the death of the person creating the trust, are usually part of the probate process and can be substantially different, often because of tax issues—so consult an appropriate expert for advice on those. For a discussion living trusts for the homestead, see our companion web article on the subject.

In structuring a trust and assigning roles to the individual participants, it is important to be cognizant of the doctrine of merger (Prop. Code Sec. 112.034). If the purported trustor, trustee, and beneficiary are all identical, then as a matter of law it is not a trust at all. Basically, the law does not allow you to convey your own property into trust to be managed by you for your own benefit. This rule frustrates many investor clients.

Types of Investor Land Trusts

There is a wide variety of trusts that involve investors acquiring, holding, or selling real property. The following are the main categories:

entry trusts, used by an investor to acquire a property, usually with the intention of flipping using an assignment of beneficial interest;

exit trusts, used by an investor to transfer limited rights in a property to a buyer who is working to restore credit and obtain traditional financing; and

anonymity trusts, which endeavor to conceal the principal or principals behind the trust, at least for a period of time.

Clients often ask attorneys for a “standard” trust (or worse, a fill-in-the-blank form they can use themselves) neither of which exists at any acceptable level of quality. There is no substitute for the analysis and drafting expertise of a competent professional in this complex area. Because trust agreements can be written in so many different ways, the challenge for the attorney is to discover what the client is trying to achieve and then tailor a custom document to suit specific needs.

The Entry Trust (Investor Acquisition of Property in Preparation for a Flip)

In the case of an entry trust, an investor coaxes a (usually) distressed seller into transferring property by recorded deed into an irrevocable trust. This is often done with a foreclosure looming. However, such trusts do not delay or stop foreclosure unless the investor is willing to promptly reinstate the loan and then continue payments until the property can be sold.

As for the trust itself, it has either been previously established by the investor or is created just for the specific transaction. In the latter case, there are two options: one names the seller as beneficiary, after which the seller immediately executes an unrecorded assignment of beneficial interest to the investor. Another version utilizes the seller as trustor (so the seller actually signs the trust agreement), the investor as trustee, and the investor’s LLC as beneficiary. The latter option is much better, since it does not allow the seller ever to be in a position of asserting the rights of a beneficiary, even if the window for doing so is brief. It is better for the investor’s potential liability if the seller is never given a beneficial interest at all. Why? Firstly, because courts tend to be sympathetic to trust beneficiaries and are more likely to go out of their way to preserve a beneficiary’s rights; and secondly, if the seller never holds a beneficial interest, then he or she can never argue that he or she was duped out it by a sly investor. It is thus preferable to arrange for the seller to transfer a 100% fee simple interest by general warranty deed and then be entirely dismissed from the investment equation.

An entry trust should always be carefully-crafted document. And, as noted, the trust should be irrevocable, since allowing a seller the opportunity to experience remorse and revoke the trust is not a good idea. This is a bedrock principle, yet lawyers see revocable land trusts all the time.

Another bad idea is allowing the original seller to retain a beneficial interest that allows the seller to share in profits when the property is flipped. It is almost always the best policy to make a clean break so there is no further participation by the seller.

Other trust agreements permit the seller to have a power of direction over the trustee, an even worse idea.

Steps in the Process

The following are the steps involved in an entry trust if there is no trust in existence at the time of the transaction (i.e., if a new trust must be established for the transaction to take place):

(1) the investor-buyer’s LLC enters into an earnest money contract for the purchase of 123 Oak Street;

(2) the contract lists the buyer as the investor’s LLC and/or its assigns;

(3) a trust agreement is executed showing the seller as trustor, the individual investor John Jones as trustee, and the investor’s LLC as beneficiary;

(4) at closing, the seller conveys the property to The 123 Oak Street Trust.

The foregoing should be closed as a stand-alone severable transaction. Subsequent assignment of the beneficial interest to an end-user should also be structured as a separate, stand-alone transaction. Do not attempt to collapse these two transactions into one. The potential liability of the investor (or the investor’s LLC) goes up substantially if this is done. Courts are more inclined to pull apart a complicated collapsed transaction and find that fraud occurred somewhere in the process.

Note that using the investor-buyer’s LLC as trustee is not an option because of the burdensome regulatory requirements that must be complied with in order for a registered entity (corporation, LLC, or limited partnership) to qualify as a trustee.

Sale and Assignment of the Beneficial Interest to an End-User

Transfer of the beneficial interest in the trust to an end-user can occur in one of two ways: (1) by means of an assignment, as discussed above, in which case the trust will continue to exist; or (2) by means of a warranty deed from the trustee to the end-user, after which the investor’s trust may be terminated. Again, this all depends on the circumstances.

If the assignment is for cash, then the document required is an irrevocable assignment of a 100% beneficial interest to the end-user, and that is all. To limit liability, the assignor should be the investor’s LLC. If the assignment to the end-user is financed, then the investor will need to ask the attorney to prepare the assignment plus a secured note for the amount financed and a security agreement that imposes a lien on the assignment, allowing it to be cancelled and revoked in event of default. It is also useful for the investor to require the end-user to execute an assignment back to investor’s LLC, to be held in reserve by the investor as security if the end-user defaults on the secured note. The “assignment back” should include full release language for the benefit of the investor.

Note that if the assignment is financed, it is advisable that financing be short-term only, in order to limit ongoing liability. The note can be amortized over a longer term (even 30 years), but if so then it should balloon (all principal and interest due and payable) in no more than five years. One to three years is better. This pressures the end-user to secure alternative financing.

Assignments of trust beneficial interests should be recorded in the real property records.

The Exit Trust (Transfer to a Trust Pending Credit Repair)

Exit trusts are created for the purpose of selling a specific property to an end-user. They involve a calculation on the part of the investor that it is better to utilize a trust than a wraparound, usually because there is some hesitation about giving the end-user a deed and fee simple title. The property is conveyed into trust by general warranty deed and the buyer takes immediate possession pursuant to a lease or equivalent document. The buyer is given either a beneficial interest (in some percentage, not necessarily 100%) or an option to purchase a beneficial interest when certain minimum requirements (often credit repair) are completed. Upon becoming beneficiary of the trust, the buyer can decide if he or she wants to keep the trust in place or take a deed outright.

The trust acts as a temporary parking place for title to the property while the buyer works to obtain financing in order to purchase the property at a specified price. Sound similar to an ordinary lease-option? It is, except that beneficial interests in a trust are personal property, not real property, and therefore one can plausibly argue that they do not fall under the executory contract provisions of the Property Code.

In the exit trust scenario, there is no deed, recorded or unrecorded, into the name of the buyer, since the buyer is not acquiring actual title to the property at the time the trust is created and the deal is closed—only the option to buy a beneficial interest. The only warranty deed being executed is the deed into the trust.

Creation of an exit trust is a private transaction except for the recording of the warranty deed. The trust agreement is not recorded. In order to achieve maximum anonymity, the name of the trust should be generic, e.g., “The 123 Oak Street Trust.”

There are no published cases on the success or failure of the exit trust as a long-term investment strategy, but there is an obvious degree of risk. A judge looking carefully at the transaction could use the sword of justice to slice through the trust verbiage and find a de facto executory contract that fails to comply with Property Code Section 5.061 et seq. For this reason, the best strategy is to keep the term of the trust as short as possible.

Are Exit Trusts a Form of Seller Financing?

The executory contract rules of Property Code Sections 5.061 et seq., the SAFE Act, and the Dodd-Frank law have combined to make seller financing of residential real estate a challenge for Texas investors. Is an exit trust a form of seller finance? The answer is debatable. If challenged, the investor will need to fall back on the argument that trust beneficial interests are personal and not real property; and even though an option is part of the trust agreement, the option is to purchase a beneficial interest rather than an option to purchase the real property itself. We make no prediction as to how that argument will fare before a discerning judge.

Use of an LLC in Combination with a Trust

Trust law in Texas falls under the Property Code while the law of business entities (LLCs and corporations) falls mostly under the Business Organizations Code.

Trusts can hold investment real property, of course, but there is no liability barrier against lawsuits as with registered entities (such as LLCs and corporations) formed under the Business Organizations Code. Even if property is held in an anonymity trust, the trust—including the trustee as well as other participants in the trust—are still individually and personally exposed to lawsuits, an undesirable result given the propensity of plaintiffs’ attorneys to join every name they can find that is connected to a transaction. For this reason, a trust (standing alone) is not usually the vehicle of choice for real estate investing.

Utilizing an LLC as beneficiary (and as assignor if a beneficial interest is transferred to an end user) can change this picture by inserting a valuable layer of liability protection. One should recall that asset protection is about the combination and layering of incremental measures. Inserting an LLC into the transactional mix is often helpful in the context of an investor land trust.

The Anonymity Trust

Use of an anonymity trust (our term) is an edgy technique that must be implemented carefully and by planning ahead. The scenario goes like this: a trust agreement is executed along with a warranty deed conveying real property into the trust. The traditional way for a trust to hold property is by expressly stating the name of the trustee, e.g., “John Jones, Trustee of the 123 Oak Street Trust;” however, it is possible to list the grantee in a deed as only the trust—e.g., the “123 Oak Street Trust”—with no reference to a trustee. Anyone seeking to know who the principals are and what assets they have has their work cut out for them since trust agreements are generally private, unrecorded documents. County clerks will accept such a deed for filing in the real property records so long as it is properly executed and acknowledged by the person conveying the property into the trust. But recording of the deed is not the problem. Issues arise later when the investor decides to transfer the property out of trust, since no trustee was named in the deed who can now sign as grantor.

Texas subscribes to the entity theory of transactions, meaning that the grantee in a deed must be a legal entity or the conveyance is void. Accordingly, users of anonymity trusts should anticipate legitimate objections from a future title company based on the proposition that a trust is not a legal entity—which it technically is not, even though trusts often act as if they are in the real world.

A trust is actually a contractual relationship, not an entity. Accordingly, one should be prepared to record a second deed which properly includes the name of the trustee. A wise alternative would be to expect this obstacle and have such a deed already signed and notarized, previously held back in reserve (a version of the deed-in-the-drawer technique), but now ready to hand to the title company upon demand. Filing this second deed cures the “trust-is-not-an-entity” objection while having preserved anonymity in the interim.

Property Code Section 113.018: Delegation to a Trust Agent

A development in favor of anonymity is Property Code Section 113.018, added in 2017, which permits a trustee to appoint an agent and grant the agent powers “to act for the trustee in any lawful manner for purposes of real property transactions.” The agent can be anyone so long as the appointment is in writing and notarized (there is no requirement that it be recorded). The appointment—or “delegation” as the statute puts it—can be supplied on demand to third parties as evidence of authority. It is valid for six months.

The Title Company and the Trust Agreement

When trust property is sold, it is likely that the title company will want to see the trust agreement, so expect that this will occur. A written trust agreement must therefore exist. It must also be properly drafted and executed so that it will be accepted as valid. Otherwise, a title company may choose to ignore the trust altogether (act as if it never existed in the chain of title) and require signatures from all persons having an actual or potential interest in the property. One should also anticipate a requirement that any assignments of beneficial interest executed along the way will have been recorded.

Be aware that since the 2008 real estate crash, title companies have become suspicious, if not outright hostile, to investor land trust transactions, so this is a factor that must be considered when considering the use of land trusts (anonymous or not) as a principal feature of an investor’s business model.

Certification of Trust

If for privacy reasons an investor is reluctant to show the entire trust agreement to the title company, then Property Code Section 114.086 provides for an alternative: a “certification of trust” (also commonly called a memorandum of trust) that is a concise summary of material trust terms. So long as the information required by the statute is contained in the certification, “A person who acts in reliance on a certification of trust without knowledge that the representations contained in the certification are incorrect is not liable to any person for the action and may assume without [further] inquiry the existence of the facts contained in the certification.” Prop. Code Sec. 114.086(f). A title company is not compelled under this law to accept a certification of trust in lieu of the actual trust agreement, but liability to third parties may be avoided if the title company chooses to do so.

A title company will likely require that a certificate of trust contain the following:

(1) a statement that the trust exists and the date the trust agreement was executed;

(2) the name of the trustor (or settlor or grantor);

(3) the name(s) and address(es) of the trustee or trustees;

(4) a statement that that the trustee’s powers include at least all of the powers granted to a trustee under the statute;

(5) a statement as to the revocability of the trust and the name of any person who has the power to revoke;

(6) a statement of authority of the trustee executing the certification;

(7) the manner in which title to the subject real property will be taken; and

(8) a statement that the trust has not been revoked, modified, or amended.

Investor Trusts and Due-on-Sale

It is widely advertised by seminar gurus that land trusts prevent a lender from exercising due-on-sale. However, Garn-St. Germain (the federal living trust exception) was intended to create an exception for transfers of property to family living trusts designed to avoid probate. It was not intended to provide a safe haven for investors seeking to use trusts as part of their business plan. The truth is that an investor land trust does not defeat due-on-sale because it invariably contemplates a transfer of rights of occupancy—so due-on-sale provisions remain effective and enforceable. Nonetheless, so long as monthly payments remain current, the discussion may be academic since lenders are generally hesitant to foreclose on performing loans. This could change, however, as interest rates rise and lenders perceive an opportunity to upgrade their portfolio of low-rate loans.

Investor Trusts and the Title Company

If and when the property is transferred out of the trust, a title company will probably want to see the trust agreement. What if the trustor used a junk form from the Internet? Following the 2008 real estate recession, title companies acquired an almost automatic resistance to any transaction with the word “trust” connected to it, so it is possible that a title company will ignore a suspect trust altogether and either require a deed from all heirs or a judicial determination of heirship—either of which can defeat the purpose of creating the living trust in the first place. So the trust agreement should be a solid, proper document.

To facilitate a title company’s cooperation, the trust agreement should include release and indemnity language that a title company may rely upon in issuing title insurance. In rare cases, if all of the foregoing measures have been unsuccessful in obtaining a title company’s cooperation, it may be necessary to change title companies.

Conclusion

Not all land trusts are created equal. There are a myriad of trusts available on the Internet that purport to be good in all fifty states. This is false. A principal defect of trusts marketed over the Internet is failure to consider or comply with Property Code Section 5.061 et seq. pertaining to executory contracts—and that is just one of many common defects. The place to get a valid Texas land trust is from an experienced Texas lawyer who knows what he or she is doing in this area.

DISCLAIMER

Information in this article is provided for general educational purposes only and is not offered as legal advice upon which anyone may rely. The law changes. Legal counsel relating to your individual needs and circumstances is advisable before taking any action that has legal consequences. Consult your tax advisor as well since we are not tax practicioners and do not offer tax advice. This firm does not represent you (i.e., no attorney-client relationship is established) unless and until it is retained and expressly agrees in writing to do so.

Copyright © 2023 by David J. Willis. All rights reserved worldwide. Reproduction or re-use of any this material for any purpose without prior written permission and full attribution is strictly prohibited. David J. Willis is board certified in both residential and commercial real estate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. More information is available at his website, https://www.LoneStarLandLaw.com.