Owning Real Estate in Your IRA

In 1975, as part of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the creation of IRAs, Self-Directed IRAs were also permitted. “Self-Directed” means that you make the investment decisions about your retirement assets—in much the same way you may invest outside your retirement plan. With a Self-Directed IRA or other Self-Directed Plan, you are able to purchase a wide variety of assets including real estate, mortgages notes, tax liens, time share units and even limited liability companies.

Custodians hold title to the assets in your IRA. These companies are federally regulated trust companies and commercial banks and most of them only hold listed stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Only a small number of these custodians are interested in holding title to assets like real estate.  Using a Self-Directed Custodian, who can help you through the process of rolling or transferring your funds into a Self-Directed IRA and then purchasing non-traditional assets in your IRA, is very important.

As your custodian, we communicate with your previous custodian to enact roll-over or transfer of funds to new Self-Directed IRA; receive, document, and report all deposits; distribute and report all fund disbursements; review suitability and paperwork for all your proposed investments; and provide all governmental filings.

With a Self-Directed IRA, the purchase real estate in your IRA is simple and transparent. You can even open a Self-Directed IRA account online today!