John Fraker: (00:04)
Hey, this is John Fraker with Keller Williams and Bay Area Estates. In our last video, we talked about a mistake that husbands and wives make on the title of their property that can cost them a lot of money, and that is owning their property as joint tenants, not as community property.
John Fraker: (00:19)
In today’s video, we’re going to talk about another mistake homeowners make that can cost them a lot of money, and that is not having their property correctly titled on their grant deed. Specifically, if you’ve had a living trust done and they put your house into the living trust by a grant deed and later on you’ve refinanced your property, often the finance company will take it out of your living trust to complete the refi, and often it will not get put back in.
John Fraker: (00:44)
So I had a client that I was working with to do a home valuation for, and she had had her living trust done back in the 1990’s. And it turns out that even though she had put her house in trust in 1990’s, when she went to refinance her property in ’99, they took it out but never put it back in. So when I was reviewing her valuation, I said, “Hey, it looks like you had a trust in the 90’s but it hasn’t been in your trust in a long time.” She had no idea what had happened and it turns out in 1999, when she refinanced it, they never put it back in. So more than 20 years had gone by and her property was not in a trust that whole time. That’s a very expensive mistake. Had she died, her house could have been subject to the court system and paying thousands of dollars to fix that mistake.
John Fraker: (01:30)
If you would like, I’m happy to get you a complimentary copy of your grant deed, so send me an email at johnfraker@kw.com or send me a text at (925) 255-5010, and request your free, complimentary copy of your grant deed and we can go over it together. Thanks so much and have a great day.
