Episode 16: Real Estate in Estate Planning: Managing Inherited Properties and Charitable Gifts
What happens to the family home when a loved one passes or transitions into care?
Real estate is often the largest and most emotionally loaded asset a family holds, and when the time comes to act, it rarely transfers cleanly. It comes with logistical complexity, financial decisions, and family dynamics that can stretch for months or years.
Chris Losquadro, founder of Quantum Realty Advisors, has spent nearly three decades specializing in estate, trust, and inherited properties. He breaks down how families and advisors can handle the sale of inherited real estate, from multi-state coordination and property optimization to the growing trend of donating real estate to charitable organizations as part of a planned estate.
Listen in as Chris walks through the full lifecycle of an estate property transaction: what happens when estate planning is airtight versus when it isn't, how families can avoid costly delays, and why donating appreciated real estate can generate far greater philanthropic impact than a cash gift.
What You’ll Learn:
Why inherited real estate requires a specialized advisor.
How to manage estate property sales across multiple states with one point of contact.
The carrying costs that quietly drain estate value while a property sits unsold.
Why the timing of a property sale (before or after death) changes the tax outcome.
How donating real estate can generate 6X the impact of a cash gift.
What families and charities must know before designating property as a charitable gift.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“If you donate non-cash assets—whether it's appreciated stock, whether it's real estate, whether it's tangibles like artwork or jewelry—you are giving six times the average of a cash donation." - Chris Losquadro
"I represent the property. I don't represent you. How the pie is cut up when it's all said and done is up to you." - Chris Losquadro
"Consult with somebody like [a financial advisor]. Consult with your attorney. Some of these decisions are not easy... but at the end of the day, you don't want to leave your spouse, your children, in a little bit of a lurch." - Chris Losquadro
Resources:
About Our Guest:
Chris Losquadro is the founder and Principal Broker of Quantum Realty Advisors, Inc., with more than 30 years of experience in estate, trust, distressed, and inherited property transactions. He has been directly involved in over $500 million in real estate sales and holds designations including Certified Probate Real Estate Specialist (CPRES) and Charitable Real Estate Specialist (CRES).
Connect with Us:
If you're ready to stop avoiding your finances and start building the future you deserve, schedule a free call with me at pelicanfinancialplanning.com and let’s create your personalized financial plan together.
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Read the Transcript:
Chris Losquadro: If you donate non-cash assets, whether it's appreciated stock, whether it's real estate, whether it's tangibles like artwork or jewelry, you are giving six times the average of a cash donation.
Welcome to The Wealth Development Studio. I'm your host, Genevieve George, Senior Financial Advisor and Founder of Pelican Financial Planning & Wealth. Our goal for this episode is to provide clarity about today's financial topic, inspire you to be brave with your questions, and gain confidence in your financial future. So take a deep breath, grab your favorite cup of coffee, and step into the studio. Your dose of financial empowerment begins now.
Genevieve George: Today's conversation is about something that often gets overlooked in financial planning but can quickly become one of the most complex pieces of the puzzle: real estate. For families, a home isn't just a financial asset. It's emotional, it's logistical, and it often comes with difficult decisions, especially during a time of transition.
I'm joined today by Chris Losquadro of Quantum Realty Advisors. They specialize in working with estate, trust, and inherited properties, helping families and advisors navigate these situations with clarity and care. They also bring a unique perspective through their work with the nonprofits, helping facilitate donated property, an option many families may not even realize they have.
Chris, thanks so much for being here.
Chris Losquadro: Thank you for having me, Genevieve. I've looked forward to this.
Genevieve George: Yeah. So I know you and your wife, Amy, have built this incredible business working in a very specialized part of the real estate market. So maybe tell me a little bit about how that happened and why your niche of the real estate market is so unique.
Chris Losquadro: Basically, we got started back in 1998, which feels like forever. It makes me sound old. But Amy and I were always in real estate even during college, our college years, and when we graduated, we both got into the corporate real estate world. In 1997, my father passed away very young, 51. He was an entrepreneur.
He owned laundromats all his life. And at twenty-six, I kinda had it with the politics of corporate life, so I said, "You know what? I'm just gonna plant my own flag and open my own company and see how it goes." I was 27 years old, didn't have much in the way of responsibilities, and here we are almost 30 years later.
Amy joined me a few years afterwards, and the rest is history, as shall we say.
Genevieve George: Yeah, I love that. Now, and you work in a very unique area of the real estate market. So I think it's maybe easily, more easily understood through like a story or a client story. So, maybe can you talk to us about a typical transaction that you and Amy may deal with?
Chris Losquadro: 100%, absolutely. I like to say if this is the world of real estate, we do this piece. It's very niche-oriented. We've always done what I want to call distressed real estate all of our careers, going back to the great financial crisis when we did a lot of work for some financial institutions, for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and basically some of the largest lenders in the world came to us with problem properties that we had to figure out.
One of those lenders had a senior lending division, which owned a lot of estate properties basically. They did reverse mortgages, lending to seniors. That was their niche, their specialty, and they would take back property and we would help them with the disposition of that, whether it was owned by the institution, whether it was in partnership with the family, whether it was owned by a trustee. Whatever the situation was, we came in no matter where the property was in all of the 50 states and was the advisor for the trust company as part of that.
And basically, let me give you a specific example. We're we're working on a case today, since you asked about a specific case. There is a local attorney here in Palm Beach County. There's a property here, a local. There's a property in Naples, Florida, and there's a property in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Basically, we are working with the trustee, coordinating the cleanup of these properties, getting things ready to go to market. A lot of these properties have some, let's call it some issues, whether it's repair issues, whether they need to have the trash removed, whether they need to be cleaned up, pressure cleaned, whatever.
We handle all that on behalf of our clients.
Genevieve George: And you're working with the trustee because the owner of these properties has passed. Is that correct?
Chris Losquadro: Correct. In this case, the owner has passed. A portion of the funds are gonna go to the kids, and the majority of the funds are actually going to the alma mater of the deceased husband and wife.
So it's a nice use of some wealth nowadays. I'm sure you see it a lot in your business. Folks with means are doing a lot of charitable donations from their estates.
And real estate is becoming a very meaningful donation. If I could transition to another case where when this couple did their estate plan 25 years ago, the home was worth about a half a million dollars.
We sold it for $6.3 million. No one expected it to be that meaningful of a donation to the alma mater, especially the kids. The kids were like—
Genevieve George: Who did not receive $6.3 million.
Chris Losquadro: Exactly. “Can I get a piece of this?” The majority of the money, again, went to the alma mater, and it was just a great use of the wealth of this family.
And we're proud to be a part of that. We're proud to help out, and we're proud to do what we can to maximize value. A lot of these properties are in a little bit of a distressed state, and we come in, we work with vendors, we work with the trustees, we work with the families. Get 'em cleaned up. We call it optimization of the property.
Get it in the best state possible, and then we get it on the market and get it sold for the maximum dollar we can. So the market has been pretty good to us. It's changing as we speak right now. I'm sure, especially in your business, interest rates are no longer at 3%, so it's making things a little more challenging to sell, but we're still getting it done.
We're still getting it done for our clients.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. And you spoke of something interesting in there. You're working on properties in three different locations, and you're working with a trustee that is maybe not located here either, right? So you’re having to coordinate the physical piece of those properties to get them cleaned up and ready to go to market so that you can maximize their sell prices for the benefit of the family or the alma mater or whomever is gonna be the beneficiary of that. Is that correct?
Chris Losquadro: Correct. That is absolutely correct, and a lot of people ask me, "You're not licensed in Wisconsin. How can you handle a property in Milwaukee?”
Well, I have a partner broker up there that we've worked with for many years, and he basically does what's called the groundwork. And I work with the trustee directly. We build a strategy, and I'm just basically working between the two of them to make sure the job is getting done and getting done properly.
And that's where a lot of our clients like that expertise. They don't wanna talk—Especially if there's multiple properties in a trust or in an estate, they don't wanna talk to 10 different brokers across the country. They want one point of contact, and I will do the rest from that point.
Genevieve George: Yeah. That's great. And it's incredible to know that you can do that across all the states, because then they're not having to work with a bunch of different professionals on that.
Chris Losquadro: Yeah. Locally in South Florida, we handle in-house, and my wife, Amy, who's my business partner, handles this directly from basically from Vero Beach to South Dade County.
We do that in-house. Now, if it gets a little farther, that's where we partner with somebody, and we have a great Rolodex of partners who we've been working with since, I don't know, 15 years now. Whether it's Los Angeles, whether it's New York, Chicago, Texas. We've sold properties in, let's say, over 40 major markets nationwide. So.
Genevieve George: Now the case that you're working on right now with the three properties in multiple locations, you mentioned a trustee. So I'm making an assumption as you're saying that the properties were titled in the name of the trust, and everything was clean and ready for you to be able to execute those transactions for the family.
But what happens when it's not?
Chris Losquadro: That's a great question. And I guess I'm the beneficiary of good estate planning. When there's not good estate planning, it makes the job a little more difficult, especially if there's heirs and beneficiaries that, let's say, don't particularly get along or somebody wants a bigger piece of the pie, 'cause unfortunately that happens in, in quite a number of cases where, let's just say the estate plan is not as clear as it should be or intended to be.
You just do the best to mediate that. Obviously, we lean on the lawyers, we lean on the financial professionals, we lean on the trust companies to help smooth that process out as much as possible. And I'm very clear with heirs, beneficiaries, whoever's receiving the proceeds, I represent the property. I don't represent you.
Genevieve George: I'm not trying to get in the middle of this family drama.
Chris Losquadro: Exactly. How the pie is cut up when it's all said and done is up to you and how you work it out. Now, there's been plenty of cases where we were in the middle of the litigation and had to stop. There's been plenty of cases we had to put transactions on hold just to get litigation cleared up.
But at the end of the day, everybody wants their piece, and they want the property sold. They don't want to carry it ‘cause real estate's expensive to carry, especially here in Florida. Most of these properties are not homestead residences, or if they are, they lose their homestead after the first year.
Taxes are expensive. Insurance is very expensive in the state of Florida. And then you have general things like utilities and maintenance costs and landscaping and pools. If it's commercial property, you have all that things as well that you have to deal with. It's just you don't want to sit on it that long 'cause there's a time value of money.
You're a financial advisor, you'd rather have money today, I presume, than in three years from now. You could do a lot of good with that money, especially if it's for a charitable organization, I presume.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Well, and particularly for what you just mentioned, right? Like I think when families go through this, you've lost a loved one and they have a home, we'll say Florida, right?
It sounds great. We're gonna get this house in Florida. We could go use it. We could go spend time there. But if you're in my peer group and still working full-time, you can't just spend all your time in Florida, nor do you maybe have the inflows to cover the outflows of maintaining that property.
And I imagine that you see some, well, hopefully you're not seeing it, but the attorneys before they get to you are seeing some disagreements maybe between heirs as well in, in that maybe one wants to keep it 'cause it sounds wonderful and the other does not, and there's some transactions involved with that as well, so.
Chris Losquadro: Sure. Without a doubt. And we've seen civil one sibling buy another sibling out, or if there's multiple siblings, one buy three out, and it all depends on the numbers, the financial situation of the individual and their family and so on and so forth, and what works for them. And we're happy to facilitate that as well.
There's been cases where we did not sell the property, we just helped value, helped give guidance, and it worked out for everybody at the end of the day. 'Cause really that's the goal.
Genevieve George: And what are some of those? We've talked about a couple of them, but are there other pitfalls that maybe families aren't, don't think about and then until the parent or somebody has passed and now the property is theirs to figure out what to do with?
What are some of the other kind of hurdles they run into that maybe they don't know about in theory?
Chris Losquadro: Sure. There's gotta be one decision maker, and I'm gonna give you a specific example of a property we're working on right now. An aunt left—she didn't have any children—left it to five different cousins, basically.
They elected one person to make decisions. You're never gonna get five people on the same page for every decision every time. It's very challenging to do. It's not a very big property. There's not a lot of dollars there to change anybody's lives on this. Everybody will get a nice vacation out of it when it's all said and done, but one person is making the decisions, and I would think that's the best way.
Now, he or she can get consensus among the group. That's fine. Have conversations. I'm happy to talk to all heirs, all beneficiaries in every situation, every case we handle. But at the end of the day, I think one person's gotta make the final decision. "Hey, we're gonna accept this offer at this price, or we're gonna spend X number of dollars to paint the home and remove all the old wallpaper and things like that."
So, at the end of the day, one person needs to be the leader of that estate or trust. And in most cases, a trustee is. But if there's a situation where no one was named, then the beneficiaries, the heirs, gotta get together and make some hard decisions, and that's one of them. That's definitely one of them.
Genevieve George: That, and that's such a plug for clear and concise estate planning done in advance, right? And I like to hope good clarity and communication in advance as well, but sometimes that's not always the case. But at least having the estate plan done in advance where that has been laid out, so that you're not leaving a mess behind for those five cousins to no longer talk to each other because they've fought over $20,000 or whatever.
Chris Losquadro: Right, and now a judge is making the decision.
Genevieve George: Yeah.
Chris Losquadro: And then, all bets are off at that point. No one's happy when it gets to case. It gets very expensive for litigation on a lot of these cases.
We do a fair amount of guardianship properties as well through guardianship cases and professional guardians, and a lot of those courts have to get involved. It's just the nature of the beast, and it's sad where a lot of cost, time, and expense goes into mediating these scenarios.
And that money could be better used for a charitable organization or for the heirs themselves. Right. It's just unfortunate, but it is part of the business.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great, that's a great point to make because we'd rather the dollars end up in our pockets, not in the pockets of the other, the court system, and the professionals and all of that.
The most—we still wanna support our local attorney friends, but you know.
Chris Losquadro: Of course. They’re busy enough right now, that's for sure. Yeah. A lot of my friends that are attorneys in the estate planning world right now are extraordinarily busy. Yeah. We're, we've been such a beneficiary of in-migration to South Florida and everything like that, and it's been good, that's for sure.
And a lot of folks, as you know, wanna revise their estate plans. They wanna make some changes. There's tax law changes and so on and so forth, and it's constantly a moving target, and they wanna stay on top of that, which is great, as they should.
Genevieve George: Now, when you're working with families, through my conversations with you, I get the feeling that a lot of times the family is located somewhere else, right?
That's why they're seeking professional help to get this ready 'cause they're not physically here and cleaning out the house and doing all of that. How are those communications on your end? I'm sure there is an emotional side for the family versus the transactional side, the financial side.
How do you navigate that and advise those clients as you're working with them?
Chris Losquadro: Right. There's no doubt it's challenging. In the beginning, we just try to give folks a good clear plan of what we think the best route to take it is. Now, we'll follow whatever direction they wanna go, but at the beginning, we try to give them a plan that we say, "Hey, if this was my mother's property, this is how I would go about doing it personally."
And sometimes they follow it, sometimes they don't. That's fine. Everybody's got a different perspective on it, and it is a very emotional time because there's been cases where, hey, I grew up in that house. That was my bedroom where I was, when I first learned to write or to color or talk to my first boyfriend or something like that.
It happens. It is definitely an emotional time, or end-of-life situations too, where maybe you're moving mom into assisted living, and mom may not be 100% there anymore, and it's very challenging to have those conversations with mom or dad for that matter. And it's just some tough decisions have to be made, and sometimes you need that home, the value of that home for care.
You sell the home for X dollars, give it to someone like you to manage and that pays for mom to live for the rest of her life in getting the care that she needs. Because families, it's challenging, especially if the family's not local. They can't move mom here. This is where home is for her.
She wants to be in Florida for whatever reason. The families have children, and jobs, and businesses, and they're very busy. So there's a lot of great places here in South Florida, a lot of great home healthcare companies as well that serve an amazing need in this process. And unfortunately, the home is usually the biggest asset that funds that care.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Well, you say unfortunately, but fortunately in some cases, because then they have that asset to pay for the care, which is excellent in that situation. And then the kids or whomever is not having to come up with that.
Chris Losquadro: And there's a lot of great facilities.
Some of these facilities are like country clubs. It's really amazing. We did a presentation here at a local one in Palm Beach Gardens, and I could not believe how nice it was. And the folks, they were just having a ball.
Genevieve George: Yeah. You put your deposit in for later? You're like…
Chris Losquadro: It was like an up-scale college dormitory for elderly.
It was fantastic. They were having so much fun. It was great. Now, I'm sure there's another side of it that I didn't get to see, of course, anything in life, but it was great to see. Just to close the loop on that circle, a lot of the seniors that have maybe are aging out of their homes and into care facilities, they've probably lived in their homes for a very long time, and the capital appreciation in South Florida has been phenomenal.
It's been absolutely phenomenal. Just over the past 20 years, the average homeowner's probably tripled if not quadrupled the value of their home, depending on the community, depending on the condition, so on and so forth. But that money is being put to very good use for care.
And it's really nice to see that.
Genevieve George: You bring up a great point there, in that if it's being sold while mom or dad are still living, so that we can liquidate it for the use for care, capital gains are gonna be a part of that. So there are some tax planning components there. And on the other side of that, if the house is being sold after they have passed, you get a step-up in basis, which is a conversation for a whole different…
But there are pros and cons to both. And if you need the liquidity, that is what it is. But there has to be some tax planning that goes into that, because that can be a sort of, somewhat of an unexpected bill.
Chris Losquadro: 100%. And to your point, I have a few cases right now that the mom or dad are in care facilities, and they're waiting.
They're not gonna sell because the capital gain is pretty intensive and they're just gonna wait to get the stuff.
Genevieve George: And there's a lot of planning that goes into that. If the kids are gonna get a step-up in basis and the home has appreciated three or four times its value from when they bought it, that's a huge win for the family.
And so it has to work within the budget with the cost of care and all of that. But there are a lot... I think all of that to be said is that there are a lot of pieces that go into the decisions to sell or keep a piece of property, and it gets even more complicated when you add distance and time.
Chris Losquadro: Absolutely. And I'm sure you see it amongst your clientele, too, having to manage retirement assets and funds to maintain, whether it's care or lifestyle at an advanced age. It's just not easy. It's just not easy.
Genevieve George: Yeah. And then I always keep bringing it back to communication because it's better that they have had that conversation, and they tell you what kind of care they want and where they want that care in advance, so we can plan for that instead of, I'm sure you've been brought in crisis planning situations.
That's not the ideal plan, but now we need care, and we have to sell this house because we need the money for the care. It'd be much better to have had a plan in advance and lead into that rather than maybe having to sell when interest rates are higher than they've ever been or whatever.
Chris Losquadro: Are you finding that down here, at least in South Florida, the population as a whole is a little bit more educated when it comes to estate planning? Are you finding that amongst your clientele and folks in the circle that you run in?
Genevieve George: I think yes and no. I think you only know to what you've needed to know.
And I think I'm fairly regularly still having conversations about things that can be considered that haven't been thought about yet. And even just down to recently, I was having a conversation with somebody who, husband and wife, very charitably inclined. They don't have kids. Their entire estate is gonna benefit charities.
But they're being charitable right now while they're living, and they have IRAs that they have to take RMDs from, and nobody told them that they can use that for charitable purposes. So just, "Hey are you doing this?" They didn't know. And that's because when they set up their estate documents 10 years ago or whatever, that wasn't something that they were thinking through their RMDs a decade later.
Chris Losquadro: And the rules change every 10 years too. So that's a big part of it. What's, what may have worked for you when you did your plan, let's say in your 40s or 50s, may not work in your 60s or 70s anymore. It may not even be applicable anymore depending on how legislative changes happen. That's for sure.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. So that's part of my job, right? And our other professional peers and colleagues is to make sure people are addressing their estate documents. Let's make sure, dust it off, make sure it's still relevant, make sure it still makes sense. Make sure that, to your point, the real estate has gone up so much in our area, does there need to be a different plan than the plan that we put in place before we saw that, that boom in real estate, right?
And that is a part of the conversation, and that's what I consider to be part of my job, is to make sure that people are thinking about these things and addressing them, and that we're coming alongside the professionals, yourself, the attorneys, the CPAs whomever, to make sure that we're all doing what's best and moving in the right direction.
Chris Losquadro: Well, I think from your perspective, you see such a broad picture of the life of your client, and the attorney does too. I maybe see one small area. Usually, it's very transactional, one piece of the puzzle, but it's a very intense transaction, and I may be speaking to a client almost daily in some cases on things like that.
Whereas you see it from such more of a high level, you get such a more of a broad picture, and I like that. I think that's very important with proper care of the client at the end of the day.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah, and good collaboration between the team, right? And making sure that maybe you're only seeing a piece of it, but you understand how that piece impacts the rest of the puzzle and that communication is happening.
Chris Losquadro: Correct. Correct. Because at the end of the day, when the property closes and I'm done, you still continue on.
Genevieve George: Right. Yeah.
Chris Losquadro: You'll still continue on, whether that's with generation two or whomever for that matter. So that's a big part of it. And the lawyers are in that same boat, that's for sure.
Genevieve George: And let's talk a little bit more of an example I'm gonna pick on my own family, right? My grandparents had a condo here.
My one side of the family is here. Another side of the family is not here. So when my grandmother passed, this was a long time ago, but when my grandmother passed, we had a little bit of what you're describing.
The sibling that is here has no need for this property because they're already here, and the sibling that is elsewhere did not wanna keep it either, right? Yeah. Because it logistically didn't make sense. And they had to come together and make some decisions and get it on the market, and let's just assume that the person that's here wasn't really excited about doing all the work.
So you coordinate that part, too, is like coming in and cleaning out the home and doing the general handyman stuff to just bring it all together. Maybe I'll stop and let you talk about that.
Chris Losquadro: 100%. Basically, we have a trusted estate attorney here locally. He says it best, "Just throw us the keys. We'll take it from there.”
So whether it's even going so far as changing locks, getting the contents valued if that's needed. If there's expensive artwork, if there's jewelry, if there's furnishings that need to be valued, we have a Rolodex of resources and contacts that we could bring in to help out. And if they wanna be sold, we could help coordinate that as well.
We have plenty of auction houses. We have plenty of liquidators. I also have a handyman that almost works quasi full-time for me that if I need something, he can get it done from electrical to light plumbing work, painting, cleaning, just trash removal, so on and so forth. And we call it an optimization process because if you don't do that, any buyer that walks in that property will immediately start just deducting numbers off the asking price.
Right. It's just human nature. It's how it goes. So our goal in what I wanna call that pre-listing stage is to get the property and show it in the best light possible.
Genevieve George: Yeah.
Chris Losquadro: Whatever we can do.
Genevieve George: Get it all buttoned up so nobody can—
Chris Losquadro: All buttoned up. Now, some estates wanna go a little bit more extensive, some want the bare minimum, and that's fine.
Everybody's budget's different. We had, I mentioned earlier, the five siblings. They chose to fully renovate the aunt's condo: paint, flooring, new kitchen. Now, we didn't go crazy. We didn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars 'cause the math wouldn't have made sense for them, and I counseled them on not doing that.
But we had our handyman come in and do a much more extensive job than he normally would do, and it worked out great. It worked out great. So it was clean. It was relatively modern, new flooring, fresh paint. We replaced the appliances. We didn't go so far as ripping out bathrooms and kitchen cabinets and things like that.
But we'll leave that to the next person. But we priced it accordingly, where it wasn't the bottom of the market, it wasn't the absolute renovation top of the market. It was somewhere in that middle that was clean and functional for the next person to come in and say, "I'm just gonna bring my toothbrush and my clothes, and I'm ready to go."
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Losquadro: And that's a big, that's a big part of it. A lot of the properties we see, especially in end-of-life situations, the last—
Genevieve George: They haven't been maintained.
Chris Losquadro: —probably 10 years of your life you're not remodeling and redecorating. You have bigger issues.
You have bigger fish to fry. There's no doubt your health is at more of an issue. You wanna spend time with family, and at that point, you probably don't care that your countertops are Corian versus quartz or something like that at that point.
Genevieve George: And you don't have the white shaker cabinets.
Chris Losquadro: Exactly. There you go. So we just try to get it to the best point possible given whatever budget limitations we have.
Genevieve George: Okay.
Chris Losquadro: And it really works out. And let me throw this in if I can. We have a fair amount of estates where they're very asset-intensive, but they're not liquidity-intensive. So we will advance funds in certain cases as long as we have a written agreement that we will be reimbursed to optimize the property, whether it's just to get it cleaned up. If you wanna take it a step or two further, we can do that as well.
Like I said, again, we have a written agreement in advance that Quantum Real Estate Advisors will be reimbursed for any costs expended with the outlay of repairs and improvement dollars.
A lot of our clients do take us up on it, do take us up on it, 'cause if there’s, whether it's tied up in court or whether there's just, there's plenty of assets but just not a lot of cash available.
And that happens. It happens.
Genevieve George: It sure does.
Chris Losquadro: And a lot of these properties are at homeowner associations or condominiums, and those monthly dues are not cheap anymore.
There's a lot of condos where it's over $1,000 a month because of the new HOA laws with reserve requirements and repairs. It gets pretty expensive, and estates have to cover that during the time period. Or the HOA's gonna send a lawyer after them and then there's gonna be more fees on top of that.
So we try to counsel our folks to, hey, stay on top of this. Watch your P's and Q's, where your dollars come from, and we'll help out with the repairs and improvements. You just make sure taxes are getting paid, the lights are staying on, the HOA is getting paid, the basics, which if you don't, they will add up to even more penalties and fees and costs on top of that.
Genevieve George: Well, and it sounds like that's a very helpful conversation to be having because those are things that maybe somebody is not thinking of, particularly in a property that isn't near them, that they're not seeing or touching or feeling, like they don’t maybe know or care that they-- there is a notice on the door from HOA, right?
Chris Losquadro: Absolutely.
Genevieve George: And obviously that matters for what you're doing in trying to maximize the sales price for the benefit of the family or the charity or whatever it might be.
If all of that stays above board and we can get through this with the least amount of hurdles as possible, and having a lien from the HOA and having other issues are gonna only slow that down.
Chris Losquadro: 100%. We actually had a case where the HOA was probably a couple years delinquent, and it was a common parking area. They towed mom's Mercedes, ended up selling it because they had the legal right to do that. No one knew in the family. Wow. "Where's Mom's Mercedes?" "Oh, we sold that for non-payment of HOA dues."
How about that?
Genevieve George: Wow. Okay.
Chris Losquadro: How about that? So, I don't know if that was completely legit. I'm not a lawyer. I don't play one on TV. Yeah, it was a common parking garage. I guess it wasn't paid and it happened, so really strange.
Genevieve George: Now, one of the areas that I've heard you speak on, and I just find it to be really interesting, is when families decide to use their real estate for their charitable contributions.
Like you described that one family where they left the most of the dollars to an alma mater. I think that sounds so generous, but there are probably some steps they have to go through on your end to still benefit, to provide the maximum benefit to the organization as well. So maybe talk to me about some of that work that you're doing in the nonprofit space for those properties.
Chris Losquadro: There's really two ways to look at this. One, if you wanna donate property prior to death, or two, you wanna leave it in your estate and those proceeds are sold there. Normally, if you leave it in your estate, it's managed by a personal representative or a private trustee. We recently did one in Fort Lauderdale where the proceeds went to Town of Towers.
It was a great million-plus condo and for a great cause. The guy did not have any children but he had a big heart for Town of Towers. That worked really well, and we worked with the trustee to, again, optimize the home, get it cleaned up, get it ready for marketing, get it on the market for sale, and to maximize the potential sale value of that home.
I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, so I can't speak to the tax benefits of each, but I've been working with our local community foundation here in Palm Beach and Martin County, and we're really trying to make an effort to have folks look at charitable gifts of real estate in advance of their estate.
So for example, if someone has a beach condo in Florida and they have not made it here in 5 or 10 years just for whatever reason, maybe they wanna consider donating that or a portion of that. And that's one of the things we work with rather than recognize the capital gain. Now I will turn somebody on to you or to an accountant or to a lawyer to help facilitate the benefits of that.
We can give them some very broad strokes, but we can't give tax or accounting or investment advice. It's not what we do, but we can give them some very broad guidance on how to proceed. And basically we use the same process. We get it cleaned up, we get it on the market, and at the end of the day, the proceeds of that sale go to a great mission.
If someone's interested in education, if someone's interested in healthcare, homelessness. There are so many different aspects of charitable giving, their alma mater, and for whatever reason, I'm seeing a lot of alma maters the past couple years. It's impressive. I guess folks had a great experience in college, and money's going back that way.
Which is good. Which is good, so.
Genevieve George: Yeah. And the concept that whether you do it within your estate after you've passed or before, doing it before is very much aligned with talking to people about donating appreciated stock, right?
You're doing the same thing and you're correct, doing some tax planning before you just trigger that is probably a smart way to go, but it's the same concept is that you're avoiding those capital gains and you're getting the charitable donation.
And in some cases people like to see that organization receive the benefit while they were living, just like people like to give to their family members while they're still here to watch them enjoy it. So there's definitely some benefits there and then doing it within your estate after passing.
It sounds like the process is very much similar as if you're working with a family versus an organization, but you're just going through the same process of cleaning up the home and getting it to market and I imagine coordinating that with the attorney or representative and trying to maximize that gift to the organization, on behalf of the estate essentially, instead of on behalf of the individual.
Chris Losquadro: The accountants and the tax attorneys have some work to do to get everything squared away on that side, but at the end of the day, it's, it to see if you could do that while you're alive in advance of your estate and part of your estate plan, it's a very meaningful gift for a lot of the charitable organizations.
And I think there was a—not think—I actually know, I don't know what the exact statistic was, but if you donate non-cash assets, whether it's appreciated stock, whether it's real estate, whether it's tangibles like artwork or jewelry, you are giving six times the average of a cash donation. I think it was Russell James, I believe, he's a professor somewhere at a Texas university that built that statistics.
I'm not 100% sure. I'm sure your audience can look that up if they wanted to, but the numbers were staggering in terms of non-cash gifts of—there were so much more than the average based on that, so.
Genevieve George: That's incredible. Yeah, that's great to know. And when an estate is nice and clean and buttoned up and the property is assigned to a charity, that process, I would think, is very similar to working with a family in the same situation.
But when it is named, but it hasn't been perfectly handled, do you see those transactions draw out a little bit more on the charitable side? I know we see it on the individual side. We talked about that you might get hung up in court or some infighting with the siblings or whatever. But when it's charitable, do you see that drawn out longer for different reasons?
Chris Losquadro: Yes and no. I think a lot of charitable organizations, they don't have the, let's call it the legal structure, corporate structure to own real estate or want to accept the liability of owning real estate, or maybe their lawyers or the general counsel will not let them own it. We have some solutions.
There are some third-party charities that will take title in their name and hold it and have a written agreement where the majority, if not all, the proceeds, will go to the charity as intended. So sometimes that could be a little bit of a hiccup is how it's being left and who will take that actual title to the property.
And then it comes down to who's making the decision. I've had several charities that were making decisions by committee, which took a week to respond to a good offer. Now, that buyer was moving on to the next property after that too, so.
Genevieve George: They were ready.
Chris Losquadro: They were ready to go, exactly. Part of that is, all right, how are we gonna do this?
Who's gonna have authority to make decisions and pull triggers? And obviously there has to be some trust in that person doing that.
Chris Losquadro: ‘Cause if you have to go to a committee every time you're spending a nickel, you're gonna have some problems. You're gonna have some problems. Yeah. You're not gonna be as efficient as you should be, and you're gonna leave some money on the table, 100%.
And that's not good for anyone, especially the nonprofit organization.
Genevieve George: So you make a great point. If I designated an organization that I wanted to receive my property after I pass. If that organization has nothing to do in the real estate space and they don't have a need for my home, and they might not even wanna take title is what you're saying.
It depends on the organization. So in some cases they may take title and then engage you to sell it to maximize the benefit to the organization, and in other cases they may not be in a position where they can even take title and they have to go to this third party.
Chris Losquadro: Right, or they can put it in trust.
Genevieve George: And then engage you, right? Or they can put it in trust.
Chris Losquadro: Or put it in trust. I've seen that a lot, just put it in trust like the one in Fort Lauderdale I referenced earlier. There's a lot of different ways. Talk to a good attorney about that. Talk to someone like you about that, could structure these properly.
But yes, it needs to be done, 'cause if you're a charitable organization that cannot, by your bylaws or documents, own real estate.
You can't leave it. You can leave it to them, but they can't accept it, and you can't force them to accept it.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Losquadro: So could be problematic, that's for sure.
Genevieve George: Yeah. So and when you say put it in trust, you're saying prior to your passing, get your estate documents, get it titled correctly. I think that's a big—I keep coming back to that. Make sure you're clear on what you want to happen and make sure everything is titled the way you want it to flow, so that you can avoid, whether it's charity or family, you can avoid any of any of the unnecessary hiccups.
Chris Losquadro: Correct. And that's where I think professionals like yourself, professionals like attorneys have to have those meaningful conversations, but sometimes it's not easy, 'cause then who wants to think about who's gonna manage my assets after I die? No one really likes to think about that and make that decision, and especially if you have a surviving spouse.
Which child that you want to designate to handle this, or do you want to hire an outside company to do that? There are plenty of independent trustees, corporate trust companies that do a fantastic job, and it's not that expensive as people think.
No one likes to pay fees, more fees than they have to, but at the end of the day, it may make sense, and there's a lot of value I've seen some of these independent trustees and corporate trustees add to the process that, at the end of the day probably saves the client money.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, and heartache.
Chris Losquadro: And heartache, absolutely.
Genevieve George: A lot of heartache on the emotional side, because as everything we're talking about here, whether mom and dad can no longer live there because they're not well enough to live on their own or they have passed, there is an emotional side to having lost that person, and now there is an administrative side to having to deal with the property, and it just seems like it's so powerful that there is someone there, a team, you and Amy, to be able to address that with such clarity and care for the benefit of whoever those heirs are, charity or individuals, and I think that's so incredible. So thank you for what you're doing.
Chris Losquadro: Thank you. And if I could ask you, in your line of work, do you find a larger percentage than, let's say, even 10, 15 years ago, of folks putting their assets in trust, whether it's the investment counselor like yourself or real estate holdings or whatever, for that matter?
Are you finding more and more folks are going to that route just to make it a little more easy and seamless for the next generation?
Genevieve George: Yes, and I think for a couple of reasons. I think we all are sitting here saying we want to avoid probate as much as possible. Titling things in a trust will help us to do that as much as we can.
But also, I think there's a control piece, right? That you have an idea, you worked your whole life to build up this asset base, and you have an idea as to how you want that to benefit the next generation, and you're leaving it somewhat to chance if it's not documented that way. And so I see that a lot is that we are using the trust to say, "Okay, this is what I want to happen. This is how I want it to be used," and keeping that control beyond the grave really.
But I think it's a great tool. And then there's, of course, asset protection and all these things that come with that as well. So I have definitely seen it move more and more towards it. I think we are seeing it a lot on the approaching retirement retiree level, but I'm seeing it a lot more too in my peer group who is building their wealth and having kids and needing to put things in place for the what ifs. And I really encourage at least to do estate planning. I'm not the one saying whether you should or should not have a trust, but I'm seeing that more and more.
Chris Losquadro: Sure. Are you finding more and more that, let's just say, the elderly generation is more comfortable having conversations with the next generation about some of the things they want?
And if I can interject real quick before you answer that, my mother was a surviving spouse, and when, before she passed, she and I had many—granted I'm in the business, so I know a little bit more about this than the next person, but we had a lot of meaningful conversations of what she wanted things to do.
She wanted her sister to have her car and I'm an only child, so that solved a lot of problems of splitting up things. But she wanted friends or family to have certain things about her mementos, and of course, if we never had those conversations, I would've never known.
Genevieve George: Yes.
Chris Losquadro: Never known.
Genevieve George: Yeah. So, I'm gonna say 50/50.
Chris Losquadro: 50/50, okay. All right.
Genevieve George: In that I really love when the matriarch/patriarch are willing to have that communication with the next generation, but I still run into when they, kind of an older school thought, "I'm not gonna share that. That's mine." They don't wanna open it up for that conversation, and I...
That is ultimately their choice. I have to meet my clients where they're at, but we're having regular communications together about what their wishes are, so I can at least help facilitate the right conversation with the attorney and whatever the case may be. But when they can have that conversation and give clarity to the next generation, I think is so powerful.
You experienced it, and that was so helpful to you. Imagine if you never had those conversations and those things were not written down.
Chris Losquadro: Yeah.
Genevieve George: What a mess it would be, right?
Chris Losquadro: You're guessing. You're just guessing. You don't know.
Genevieve George: Yeah. You just don't know. And I'm coming at it from having seen both, right?
I've had clients that have come to me after somebody has passed unexpectedly, and they're dealing with the mess. And so I'm taking that—that was horrible for them, and I'm taking that experience. I'm like, well, you wanna make sure that you help your family avoid this mess. They're already gonna be emotionally distraught that they don't have you anymore.
Chris Losquadro: Correct.
Genevieve George: The more we can put this together, button this up, and make it as clear as possible, the better, so that you're not leaving also an administrative problem.
Chris Losquadro: Yeah. Yeah. And it's an emotional time. So you know what? You wanna check the boxes in advance just to make sure it's all ready to go.
So it's a very emotional time, and everybody deals—everybody's grieving process is different, that's for sure.
Genevieve George: Yeah. And you're working with a lot of clients in this, right, where they've just lost somebody. I think your priorities get mixed up, too, and you be- because of the emotional piece.
And so I have a lot of conversations with people around, okay, I'm so sorry that this has happened, but these are the things that we need to address first, and these are the things that you can set aside, and it's okay. But I think you get so bombarded with, oh my gosh, this list is so overwhelming and long, but it's not all urgent.
And that is, that's the piece that we have to work through with the attorney and with the other professionals and make sure that the family understands what the next steps are and not trying to overwhelm them, so.
Chris Losquadro: Absolutely. Well, somebody in your role and the attorney are probably the two, what I would call main coordinators of folks like myself, maybe folks like tax advisors, so on and so forth, estate liquidators.
And there's a lot of pieces to the puzzle, but your piece and the legal piece are probably, in my opinion, some of the most important of the whole process ‘cause things can go south quickly if not managed properly.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And then it, it depends on what has happened and whether it was planned and known to be coming or if it was sudden, and there's just different things that come up along the way with that.
And so it's important and, but it's so powerful to have a good team, and that's what I always tell people is you gotta make sure that you're communicating these things. I try to communicate with the other professionals that I'm working with on behalf of the clients and make sure that they're all, we're all working towards the same goals and not against each other.
That's so powerful. And to the extent that we can make the client's life easier and everybody else's life easier, that's the goal. And that's what you're bringing to the table, too, if you're trying to help these people not have to deal with the logistics of selling these properties that are all over the area.
Chris Losquadro: There's a lot of satisfaction that Amy and I get, a lot of personal satisfaction at the end of the day when somebody will say to us, "We couldn't have did this without you." That's the best thing we love to hear. It's the best thing we love to hear is, "We couldn't have did this without you. You took off so much, so many things off our plate that we didn't have to worry about."
And like I said, whether it's a guardianship case or an estate or whatever, it's never easy. End-of-life situations are just never easy, and it's nice to be able to have that expertise to help somebody or a family in that situation.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Well, so how can people find you if they need your services?
Chris Losquadro: Well, our website, quantumrealtyadvisors.com. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I post a lot of data about the real estate market in general. I have a monthly newsletter. It's like more of a kind of a market update that I produce. It handles both a very high-level summary of the nation and from South Florida as well, 'cause that's where we're based out of.
And if folks are interested, just keeping in tabs on real estate, just they can shoot me a note through our website and I'll add them to our database, and they'll get... They're not gonna get spam. They're gonna get one email that is real that's gonna have up-to-date market information every month.
Genevieve George: That's great. That's great. And if you have advice, like a closing piece of advice for anybody listening related to their real estate, what would that be?
Chris Losquadro: I would just say whatever your plan is make sure it's locked down. Consult with somebody like yourself. Consult with your attorney. Some of these decisions are not easy.
They take a lot of thought, but at the end of the day, you don't wanna leave your spouse, your children in a little bit of a lurch. You wanna make sure you get as much of that tied up as possible, so.
Genevieve George: Yeah. I love that. Well, thank you so much, Chris.
That's it for today's episode of The Wealth Development Studio. Remember, financial clarity is powerful. Do you need help with your financial plan? Go to pelicanfinancialplanning.com to schedule a call with me. Until next time.
