Commercial Real Estate Investing For Dummies

Chapter 12

Protecting Your Assets

In This Chapter

Understanding why you need protection

Determining how to protect your assets

Using common-sense strategies

Want to hear some things that may keep you up at night? More than 90 million lawsuits are filed in the United States each year. And in this country there are more attorneys per capita than in any other civilized country in the world. Right now the United States has over 700,000 attorneys with another 100,000 in law schools. To stay in business and support their families, many of these attorneys have to file or defend lawsuits instead of preventing the lawsuits from happening.

That’s where asset protection comes in. You may be thinking “I don’t want to have so many assets that someone is going to try to come after me.” The sad truth is that you can be sued for anything. With attorneys willing to take cases on a contingency basis, you may very well become a target whether you think you are or not.

Asset protection can be quite confusing to the newbie investor. And because every real estate investor needs to have it, you need to get a handle on it. We’ve got you covered in this chapter. We provide tips on some of the best things ...