This is not just a phenomenon of titans, there are plenty of mom-and-pop operations too. I worked with someone who got in a fight in the office with her father over the phone. He was pissed she wouldn't accept a $250,000 deposit into her US account from her uncle's account (his brother) in China. The goal was to buy a house in the name of her cousin in LA.
Majority are likely small-time landlords, local investors, and etc, as it is very easy to set up an LLC. Also, I wonder if HNers describe their startups as "anonymous shell companies"?
> I wonder if HNers describe their startups as "anonymous shell companies"?
HNers' LLCs probably have their names on them, they're not anonymous. This article is talking about it not just being the name of a company being in property records, but that the actual "beneficial owner" of the company not being named in the incorporation records.
Honestly property ownership being default-public seems like a weird anachronism. Why should anyone who has my address be able to tell if I own the property?
I haven't looked into the exact details as I've never bought a house but from what I can gather I'd want to wrap it in an LLC.
Also FWIW the Sean Hannity example in the article seems like a weird strawman conflating consumer protection laws with "name and shame" accountability. If it's wrong to evict someone for XYZ reason, that should be protected by the law, not by fear of being "named" as the landlord. [TBC I am no fan of Sean Hannity.]
> Honestly property ownership being default-public seems like a weird anachronism
Land registry is a necessary function of local government. But this is one of those things which was historically only available within a government office, and now can be found in a second on the internet.
Personally I would be perfectly okay if my local government required disclosure of the personal ownership of LLC property owners. But I have no idea if that's constitutional or legal under federal laws.
>But this is one of those things that was historically only available within a government office
If you want to know where a person lived pre-internet, you looked them up in a phone book, which is substantially less privacy preserving than looking up the owner of a house.
Well, post-internet, 2FA has been leaked to advertisers.
Lots of reasons, but the easiest: property can quickly become a nuisance, hazard or destroy the value of neighbors property. You need their ID to track them down.
also, if the house ends up being a meth lab, it's useful to track down the owner or landlord. or who's on the hook to pay property taxes. or whether your deed is a legitimate transfer. etc. etc.
In case any redditors are here, anyone can set up a LLC in California for like $300. I am and have been in a bunch of them, but we've never been successful enough to look into Panamanian services :/
