A good share of the calls we get about trust-owned land start the same way. “My parents put the property in a trust back in the nineties, Dad passed last year, and apparently I’m the trustee now. I have no idea what that means for selling.” Or the shorter version from an older seller: “It’s in my trust. Does that make it harder?”
Usually, no. A living trust is one of the cleaner ways to hold land when it comes time to sell, because the whole point of the trust was to make handing the property off simple. But there are a few places where trust sales get snagged, and most of them come down to paperwork that was done twenty years ago and never looked at again. Here’s what actually matters, what we take care of, and the short list of what’s on you.
A Living Trust Usually Makes the Sale Easier, Not Harder
Quick plain-English version, since a lot of people have a trust and were never really told how it works. A revocable living trust is a container. You (or your parents) signed a document creating it, named a trustee to manage what’s inside, and deeded the land into it. The trust owns the land. The trustee signs for the trust. While the person who set it up is alive, they’re usually the trustee too, so day to day nothing feels different.
The reason people set them up is to skip probate. When the person who created the trust dies, the successor trustee named in the document steps in and can sell or distribute the property without a court process. When the trust was set up right and the deed was actually recorded, it works. We’ve closed on trust-owned tracts in Colorado, North Carolina, and South Carolina that moved as fast as a plain individual sale, 30 to 45 days start to finish.
The catch is that “set up right” and “deed actually recorded” are the two things that go wrong, and you usually don’t find out until someone tries to sell.
Who Actually Signs When a Trust Owns the Land?
The trustee. Not the beneficiaries, and not whoever’s name is on the tax bill. The title company will want to see the trust document, or a shorter version called a certification of trust, to confirm two things: who the current trustee is, and that the trust gives that person the power to sell real estate. Almost every living trust does.
If there are co-trustees, the trust usually says whether they have to act together or either one can sign alone. If the original trustee has died or can’t serve, the document names who steps up next, and the title company will want a death certificate or a doctor’s letter to document the handoff. None of this is unusual. Title companies in all three states we work in see trust deeds every week. You don’t need to figure any of it out before you call. Just tell us the land is in a trust, and we’ll ask for the document.
The Most Common Snag: The Land Never Made It Into the Trust
This is the one we run into more than anything else. Someone sat down with an attorney, signed a thick trust document that says “all my real property,” paid a few thousand dollars, and went home. But nobody ever recorded a deed moving the land into the trust’s name. The trust exists on paper. The county still shows the land owned by John Smith, not the John Smith Living Trust.
If John is alive, this is an easy fix. He can either sign a deed into the trust and then sell as trustee, or just sell as himself. We handle it either way, and the title company will tell us which is cleaner in that county.
If John has passed, it’s a bigger deal, because the land he thought was protected by the trust is now sitting in a deceased person’s name with no trustee who can sign for it. Depending on the state, that usually means some form of probate or a court petition to get the land into the trust after the fact. It isn’t the end of the sale. We walked through what probate looks like for land sellers in an earlier post. Typical attorney fees run $1,500 to $5,000 and it adds a few months. We coordinate the attorney and can often get the land under contract while that’s in motion.
When the Trust Name on the Deed Doesn’t Match the Trust Document
Second most common. The deed says “Smith Family Trust.” The trust document says “The John A. and Mary L. Smith Revocable Living Trust dated March 4, 2004.” Or the deed lists John as trustee, the trust was amended in 2015 to make his daughter trustee, and nobody recorded anything about it.
Most of the time this is a curable title issue. The title company will accept a certification of trust that ties the names together, or we’ll record a corrective deed. It’s the same category of problem we wrote about in how we fix deeds that have errors on them, and it usually adds a week or two, not months. The fix comes out of our side of closing.
Selling as a Successor Trustee After a Parent Passes
If a parent died and you’ve just learned you’re the successor trustee, here’s what you’re actually responsible for. It’s less than you’re probably worried about.
You’ll need a copy of the trust (including any amendments) and the death certificate. That’s it on the document side. The title company reads the trust to confirm you’re the named successor with the power to sell, and you sign the trustee’s deed at closing. Proceeds go wherever the trust says, usually the trust’s bank account. Siblings who are beneficiaries don’t sign the deed, but you as trustee owe them a fair price and an honest accounting, which is one reason we put every offer in writing and explain how we got to the number.
A lot of successor trustees are in the same spot as people who inherit land outright: property in a state they don’t live in, taxes nobody’s been paying, no idea what it’s worth. Our post on selling inherited land you don’t want covers most of that ground, and the trust piece is usually the easiest part.
One thing we’ll say plainly. If there’s a family disagreement about whether to sell, or at what price, that’s a conversation for the trust’s attorney and your siblings, not us. We’ve written about what happens when siblings can’t agree on a price, and the trust version plays out about the same way. We can tell you what the land is worth to us and how fast we can close, and you take that back to the family.
What We Handle on Trust-Owned Land
Pretty much all of it. Once you call, we pull the deed, the plat, the tax records, and the assessor data ourselves. We don’t need you to find the parcel number. We ask you for the trust document (photos of the pages taken with your phone are fine) and send it to the title company. They read it, tell us who needs to sign, and flag anything that’s off.
If the land never got deeded in, or the names don’t match, we coordinate the attorney and the corrective paperwork. If there’s a co-trustee in another state, we send a mobile notary to them too. We pay the closing costs: title insurance, recording fees, transfer taxes, and the title company’s fees. We’ve closed deals with eight heirs on one deed spread across multiple states, so a trust with one trustee and a clean deed is on the simple end of what we do.
We don’t give tax advice. Selling out of a trust can have tax consequences depending on when the person who set it up died and how the trust was written, so talk to a CPA on that one. We’ll give you the closing statement they’ll need.
What’s Actually on You
Four things, and none of them takes more than about twenty minutes.
First, a phone call. You tell us roughly where the land is and that it’s in a trust. We find everything else online.
Second, a quick ID verification with the title company, usually a phone call or a scan of your driver’s license, plus getting them the trust document.
Third, signing the closing documents. We send a mobile notary to your kitchen table, wherever that is. You’ll sign as trustee, so the signature line reads something like “Jane Smith, Trustee of the Smith Family Trust.”
Fourth, telling us how you want the money. Wire to the trust’s account or a check, whichever works.
What to Watch For With Other Buyers
A few patterns. Some buyers hear “trust” and either walk or knock the offer down, usually because they don’t want to wait on a title company reading a forty-page document. That isn’t a reason for you to take less.
Some will ask you to deed the land out of the trust and into your own name before they’ll buy it, “to keep it simple.” Don’t do that without talking to your attorney or CPA first. A trustee can sell directly, and deeding it out can create problems you didn’t have before. We buy from trusts as trusts.
And if a buyer tells you the land can’t be sold because it’s in a trust, or because the trust was never funded, they’re either wrong or they don’t want to do the work. Almost every trust problem we’ve run into has a fix. Some take a week, some take a few months and an attorney, but none of them made the land unsellable.
How to Get Started
We’ve been buying land in Colorado, North Carolina, and South Carolina since 2019, and trust-owned parcels are a regular part of what we close. Most sellers never knew the trust was even a question until the title company asked for the document, and once they handed it over, the sale looked like any other. The line we hear most often afterward is some version of “I wish I’d called you years ago.”
If you’re holding land in a trust, or you’ve just become the trustee of one and want out, call us at (719) 224-0411 or fill out the form on the home page. We’ll research the property ourselves, read the trust with the title company, and come back with a free, no-obligation cash offer. If it works for you, we typically close in 30 to 45 days, we pay every closing cost, and we send a mobile notary to you for the signing.