The real estate attorneys at the Palm Beach Florida–based law firm of Rabideau Klein understand the unique challenges associated with the luxury market. To give those who buy and sell luxury homes, as well as the exclusive realtors who represent them, a powerful new tool to protect the privacy of those engaging in high-end transactions, Rabideau Klein’s legal experts created Cloaked Closing®.
Unique Appraisal Issues Affecting Florida Luxury Homeowners
While intuitive real estate buyers and sellers understand that a high appraisal can serve a temporary benefit during the bargaining and lending process, in the long run, an inflated appraisal can be very costly. This is especially true in the luxury home market where the appraisal figure can result in the addition of tens of thousands of dollars in county taxes, year after year.
Real estate “comps,” which is short for comparables, are an essential element of a real estate appraisal. The process usually involves comparing the price paid for properties that are similar to the house being appraised and that are in the same area. It’s pretty straightforward when you’re comparing three-bedroom, two-bath homes in a particular subdivision.
But how can you find comps when the property being appraised is a large, luxurious, one-of-a-kind home and nothing even remotely like it has been sold in years? Florida real estate lawyers and appraisal experts agree that homes in the high-end luxury market are among the most difficult to accurately appraise. “Large, luxurious homes are more challenging to appraise because of their unusual size and floor plans,” confirms the experts at Trimavin, a highly regarded appraisal field and management company.
Additionally, it’s up to the appraiser to determine the value of a high-end home and when reasonable comps are not available, cost, replacement cost and reproduction cost are used to evaluate an unusually large and extravagant estate. However, it’s likely that an appraiser not used to handling mega-mansions on a regular basis would be unfamiliar with the specifics and nuances of a high-end home value and construction costs.
Once the property transference is complete, the new owner will typically have to live with that evaluation for the duration of the ownership until the home is re-sold, and could end up paying annual property taxes based on an over-inflated appraisal. Whether the market shifts up or down.
A Thoughtful Solution Discovered by Key Florida Investors
By heeding the preferred practices of some of the savviest real estate investors in the world, the Florida law firm of Rabideau Klein found that by keeping certain transactional processes “invisible,” clients could gain a significant fiscal advantage. They bundled it into a new closing tool that includes the documents and procedures critical to positioning their clients to achieve their most fiscally advantageous outcome during the closing process. Cloaked Closing® is now available to anyone in the luxury real estate market that seeks to enhance the value of their real property investment.
Cloaked Closing®—available exclusively through Rabideau Klein—offers benefits that go far beyond those of a ‘private’ sale. This innovative tool, which relies on the firm’s copyrighted legal documents, ensures dealers in high-end real estate enjoy a number of substantial benefits, including:
- Complete concealment of ownership
- Potential savings of tens of thousands of dollars in real estate taxes
- Potential protection against inflated appraisals
If you have questions about the potential advantages that a Cloaked Closing® may offer you as a buyer or seller of Florida real estate, please contact the Florida Bar Board Certified in Real Estate lawyers at Rabideau Klein.