You don’t need to pay state tax out of pocket for LLC.
How does the LLC tax work? If the LLC is treated as a sole proprietor, owner will pay tax just like an individual. Are you talking about treating LLC as a S-Corp or C-Corp to pay corporate tax instead? California requires $800 minimum tax for LLC even if there’s no profit
Land trusts is mostly used to hide ownership of a property. It doesn’t hide it from the legal/tax authorities - you can still, but you need to try harder. Most people use it as a first line of defense because public records are available on sites like arivify - so it takes 5 seconds to find who resides where.
With land trust, what happens is you put the house on a land trust and assign yourself as beneficiary, and a trustee you “trust” is designated as trustee. After the trust is setup, the trustee resigns, beneficiary takes control, but this is not recorded anywhere.
The issue wrt land trust and privacy is, if you take a loan, you take it under your name most of the time so some competitive attorney could probably find it. IF it’s all cash, good luck.
In some setups, an LLC is formed to roll the trust under an LLC which you control (which is also not recorded), so you can technically put a mortgage under an LLC this way. It’s somewhat risky “if” a bank finds this out because it triggers due on sale.
I don’t plan on doing the LLC thing, but plan on land trust eventually (due to timing constraints i won’t be able to do it for my primary, likely).
Don’t try to make it more complicated than what it has to be. I’ve already explained the benefit in my above post.
I always wondered whether agents still make 3% commission on this type of deals.
I imagine they would.
Usually over $10m it is 1% …like commercial deals…
So selling a $9m property @3% is way better than selling a $10m @1% 
It’s probably a step function with a gradual drop, not a sudden one.
Use to think $3m @3% is extremely sweet for the agents. Just make one sale a year and you’ll be better off than a lot of engineers. Make two and you can leave 80% of engineers in the dust. It’s still sweet but now there are so many $3m transactions that it’s becoming common now.
One of my student tenants quit his best buy sales job a few years ago but I didn’t know where he went. Chatted with him last week and he is now a salesman at a small new car dealership. He said he regularly makes $10k a month, and he is just average. Their star salesman makes $40-50k a month. He quit school already as there is no point finishing the college program as he won’t be able to make as much with that degree as what he is making now. Too bad we just got a new car otherwise we could get a good deal from him.
Usually 2% on over $3m …2.5% is the standard of the industry…3% is for places where houses sell under $200k
Plenty of agents will negotiate…plenty will do deals for 1%…or even a set fee…
Stanley Lo offers only 2% to buyers agents…
Only 10% of agents make money…They get 90% of the business…Everyone wants to hire the top producer…although often that means they get less service or just see their helpers…
contrary to original post, i think pa is also slowing down. not much, but more houses stay on the market for more than 9 days 
If the houses are getting into pending in 9 days, then it is too crazy.
For wide publicity and buyers needs to get additional financing approval, listing agent needs to give two weekend open houses. Less than two weekend open houses, visibility is low or listing agent is not creating competition !
In one home, I need to compete with 19 offers (and lost) when it was open houses two weekends, but I am able to win this home with 6 bidders (almost same location) to win with one weekend open house !!
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Someone is setting lot value at 3.3M.
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Lets say one of my bigger mistakes is to not buy 10ksqft corner lot in pa on louis rd. 700k mistake
Brand new house. Would have sold like hot cake. still on market - after 14 days.
Tear down in barron park. CAn’t tell if it’d sell or not - i visited barron park places before, but don’t actively watch. I’d assume a brand new house would still be worth a lot in that large-ish lot.
I saw the house on loma verde in dec. It’s on the wrong side of the street (gunn vs paly). This house has been listed/delisted multiple times and originally listed for 4.5. Seems like a case of greedy investors.
what’s the difference b/ gunn vs paly?
I think people prefer paly. The richer part of PA goes to paly. Also gunn is way too competitive.
You have given the clue also !
Loma Verde is in the high speed traffic road. Whatever this home sells, add 250k-300k (guess work at palo alto level) for low traffic road, that becomes the sale price of Paul ave when the builder buys some X price+carrying cost+build cost.
The nearest 2017 sale new home is 4.1M (three homes sold)
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3880-Magnolia-Dr-94306/home/143416224
With this, if he build cost 1M+purchase price 2.5M+carrying cost for 1 year+profit 500k = 4.1M or 4.25M, some builder will buy it.
It’s getting harder with the current prices. There is agent fees which is 150k - 200k. It will probably take 2 years to build unless you are an experienced investor thats streamlined the process. The carrying cost will be significant if you need hard money. I think this is why some investors are opting for 5000 - 6000sqft mega mansions.
Sellers are, as usual, greedy to get top or max price. Yes, if it is harder for everyone and carrying costs goes to 2 years, the bid price will be reduced to that level.