Real Estate Planner—What Is It and Why You Need One
We’re thrilled to share a new designation we’re pursuing within Keller Williams called Real Estate Planner. Since this is a new and unfamiliar designation to many, we want to explain what it is and the benefits of using a Real Estate Planner.
What is a Real Estate Planner?
In our experience as Real Estate Agents in the East Bay, we’ve realized that while Realtors are skilled at the transaction piece of real estate (buying and selling), there’s a need for expertise well beyond that transaction. This expertise beyond the transaction part is where a Real Estate Planner comes in.
Real Estate Planners look more holistically at someone’s real estate holdings. They help clients build, protect, and transfer generational wealth. They build bridges with and create a team of key stakeholders, including CPAs, wealth managers, and trust and estate attorneys. This is to ensure that they help clients create a powerful wealth and legacy plan.
Things a Real Estate Planner Can Help You With
Employing a Real Estate Planner has applications across all ages, whether you’re in your 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s. A Real Estate Planner’s expertise comes into play whether you’re in the building phase of your life or you’re later on in your life, have retired, and are looking for what your next move is.
Here are three examples of where a Real Estate Planner is most valuable:
1. Wealth Protection and Tax Planning
On the younger side, Real Estate Planners can assist in wealth planning and protection, including creating a trust and estate plan. Real Estate Planners can educate you about the value of putting properties and assets into a trust. In addition, tax planning comes into play so you can save or defer taxes, thus making it possible for you to continue to invest and create wealth.
All too often, younger people put this kind of planning off for later. However, planning for life’s unexpected changes can be one of the most powerful ways to protect assets, whether that’s a primary home, investments, or personal items, and transfer the wealth you’ve built to the next generation.
2. Planning for Retirement and Wealth Transfer
A Real Estate Planner is an essential tool when you’re no longer in the building phase of your life relative to your wealth, work, and career and are instead focused on retirement. Perhaps you want to simplify and don’t need as large a return on your investments because you’ve already built the nest egg. What do you do with that, then? How do you transfer some of that out of your name and into someone else’s name? Or, how do you protect it or defer the capital gains taxes? How do you make it so that you can live off of that comfortably as you need more care physically or medically?
These are the questions that we, as Real Estate Planners, help our clients strategize around and create a plan for. There are many avenues that many people don’t know about or think about unless they are buying or selling a property, which only happens every 5, 10, or 15 years. Strategically setting yourself up for the future with a Real Estate Planner is time well spent.
3. Downsizing
A Real Estate Planner can be beneficial for people who are planning to downsize. That’s because a Real Estate Planner can look at both the high level down to the nitty-gritty of actual planning.
For example, let’s say you need to downsize and you have a lot of personal belongings in your home. You’re not sure how to pack it up, move it, or downsize. As Real Estate Planners, we’ve aligned with experts in fields such as professional packing, move management, retirement facilities, and in-home care.
From higher-level topics best served by CPAs or trust and estate attorneys to these specific task oriented jobs, we take a holistic view and serve our clients at a much higher level.
Summary
Based on our experience, some people reach a phase in life where they prefer to remain in their home. This is especially common for those who have paid off their mortgage, saved, and built up a nest egg. There are valid reasons for this choice, including financial and health considerations.
To assist people in making informed decisions about their options, we became Real Estate Planners. We guide clients through the various resources available to them, such as those for staying in or leaving the home, and how to declutter or downsize effectively. Our goal is to provide comprehensive guidance to those we have the privilege to serve.
For example, we want to help our clients avoid situations where they purchase rental property that yields only a 2-4% return, when another market could provide a 10% return. By helping clients understand all their options, we can help them achieve more favorable results, such as retiring comfortably on rental income.
As Real Estate Planners, we strive to offer our clients the knowledge and understanding necessary to make informed decisions that are best suited to their needs.
Conclusion
We will be sharing more information about Real Estate Planners in the coming months, from different tax strategies to different types of retirement facilities. We’re really excited to share this knowledge with people who need it.
WE hope our video on what is a Real Estate Planner and why you need one has helped you.
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