You need legal / tax advice – not anonymous blog advice
Changing the name on the deed to the trust name could be as simple as filing a Quit Claim deed where you are the grantor and you grant the real property to the trust – fill out the form and take it to the County Recorder’s office for filing – Nolo Press probably has guide books and forms to help do this
There is a form that you fill out to file the Quit Claim – it will ask what type of transfer is being accomplished – a transfer from you to a trust controlled by you should not trigger any tax consequences but again, I’m neither a lawyer or a CPA – what you want to avoid is having the property re-assessed at its current value which would result in increased taxes (unless you bought from 2003-2007!)
Setting up the trust is a separate issue – there are several different types of trusts and they accomplish different things – since real estate is involved I’d want to be very clear about managing / controlling the property from within the trust – again, I’d go to Nolo Press as a starting point – they will have the guide books and forms – even if you decide not to do the forms / filing yourself, you will save time/$$$ at the lawyer/CPA’s office if you have done some research ahead of time
Something else to consider: unless you have over $3.5 million in assets when you die there are no estate taxes so money spent ‘avoiding probate’ might be money wasted – the trust could, however, be used to specify exactly how the property is managed after you pass on even if you don’t exceed the $3.5 mil marker
