The Federal Government is about to blow open the secretive gates behind which many of Miami’s priciest real estate deals are made, exposing the real owners behind many anonymous limited liability companies (LLCs).
The Federal Government is about to blow open the secretive gates behind which many of Miami’s priciest real estate deals are made, exposing the real owners behind many anonymous limited liability companies (LLCs).
Miami is notorious for being an international hotbed and safe haven for stashing your cash, whether earned foreign or domestically, in luxury real estate, where buyers often form shell companies to hide their property from the United States Government as well. If you can’t track the owner of a multi-million dollar condo, it’s a lot harder to track where they got the money to pay for it, and to make sure they got that money legally. According to the New York Times, the Feds will require title insurance companies to identify the actual owners of real estate, which they are calling the ‘beneficial owners,’ purchased for over $1 million in Miami-Dade County and $3 million in Manhattan (expanding to other locales if the program works), for a database that will be shared with law enforcement. According to Gridics data, there are 110,563 properties in Miami-Dade County that have an LLC listed as their primary owner, so somebody’s got to be a little nervous.
