Wealth Management Credit Check
My wife and I will be selling two, small rental properties this year and want to reinvest the proceeds into other investments. The issue is that we do not possess the knowledge and experience necessary to make the moves into other diversified, financial assets. There are many wealth management individuals and companies available but which ones can be trusted not to lose our money? Is there a credit rating company which we can use to find out whether or not these persons and institutions are trustworthy and have good reputations? Thank you for your recommendations and ideas.
May 15, 2025
Parent Replies
I guess I'll be boring and share that when we recently sold a house, we parked the proceeds immediately into our Vanguard money market fund, and are planning to move chunks over time into our other funds held with Vanguard, a mix of bonds & mutual funds. If that is an option for you, it takes the pressure off finding the perfect advisor before selling the properties. Vanguard provides a personal "wealth advisor" if your total assets with them are more than $5m so you can ask about all their funds & offerings, if you are less risk-averse than I am. (I assume you have already decided against a 1031 since you mention wanting to diversify. So you will want to make sure you have a good handle on your taxes for the year since you'll likely have a big tax exposure.)
Different circumstances, but I needed something like this a few years ago. A friend suggested I reach out to her in-house advisor at Schwab. He was great! Particularly because he said my situation was complicated and had significant tax implications. He recommended an independent wealth adviser vetted by Schwab and working through their platform. I chose to work with Summitry and am very pleased with their service. I have the best of both on my team, well worth the fee I negotiated.
Proceeds from sale of real estate are no different from an influx of any other cash money. The other poster gave you good advice regarding where and how to "park" the cash. If you have questions about the consequences of sale of rental property - the answer is: taxes. Capital gains taxes, recapture of depreciation, net investment income tax. Federal and state. You mention selling two properties. You may want to sell each one in a different tax year to minimize the foregoing taxes. You may want to consider installment sales wherein the capital gains income is spread out over several years. Please consult a tax expert in real estate sales to discuss your options.
Most wealth managers take a percent of your assets (expensive), and some take commissions (bad).
I like www.HIPinvestor.com since they are a fee only fiduciary. I pay $150/hour. RPaulH [at] HIPInvestor.com (RPaulH[at]HIPInvestor[dot]com) - try them.