How Do You Buy a House Anonymously in Florida?

Can You Buy a Florida Home Without Your Name on the Deed?

A Florida home can be bought without the buyer’s name on the deed. The seller deeds the house to a trustee of a trust, or to a limited liability company, and the county’s official records then show the trustee or the company as the owner. Florida’s land trust statute goes further than most. A recorded deed to a land trustee vests both legal and equitable title in the trustee, whether or not the deed mentions the beneficiaries or the trust agreement.

The deed is one of several public records, though. The mortgage, the homestead exemption, a spouse’s signature and a company’s annual report can each name you, and which of them do depends on the tool you choose and on whether you borrow. Privacy here means privacy from the public record. A judge, a creditor’s lawyer with a subpoena and law enforcement can learn who stands behind a trust or a company, because the trustee, the title company and the lender all know.

Three Ways to Keep Your Name Off the Record

Florida buyers use three tools to keep a name off the deed. A revocable trust is the ordinary living trust, with a trustee other than you. A land trust is a trust created under Florida’s land trust statute, in which a professional trustee holds title and you keep every right to direct the trustee, collect the rent and sell. An LLC is a company that takes title in its own name. Each one keeps something different off the record.

Homestead is the other half of the comparison, and each tool treats it differently. An LLC costs you both Florida homestead protections, as we explain on does an LLC get homestead protection in Florida. A revocable trust keeps both the tax exemption and the creditor protection when the trust is drafted with the right language, and the separate rules for married owners are on putting your Florida homestead in a revocable trust. A land trust is built mainly for rentals and land, and our Florida land trust page explains why a home you live in usually belongs in a different structure. Our comparison of an LLC and a trust for real estate covers the liability side.

How a Revocable Trust With an Institutional Trustee Keeps the Deed Private

A revocable trust keeps your name off the deed only when someone other than you is the trustee. Most living trusts name the person who created the trust (the settlor) as the first trustee, and a deed to that trust reads “Jane Smith, as Trustee of the Jane Smith Revocable Trust dated March 1, 2026.” A deed in that form names the owner twice. A privacy trust changes two things. The trustee is a bank or trust company, and the trust carries a name that does not contain yours.

The deed then names the institution, as trustee of the trust by its name and date. The trust agreement, which says who created the trust and who benefits, is not recorded. The lender and the title insurer read either the agreement or a certification of trust before closing, and both stay in private files. Our page on whether a trust is public record in Florida covers what becomes public at death.

You keep the power to revoke and amend the trust, and the house remains yours for tax and creditor purposes. The institution charges an annual fee for serving, set by its own schedule, so ask for that schedule in writing before the trust is signed. If you already own the house, a deed moving it into the trust records you as the grantor, so the privacy works best when the trustee takes title at the purchase closing. The steps for an existing home are on putting your house in a trust in Florida.

Who Can Be Your Trustee if You Want a Conventional Loan?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy most conventional home loans, and their rules on who may serve as the trustee of a borrowing trust are different. Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide requires the trustees to include either the person who created the trust or an institutional trustee that customarily performs trust functions and is authorized to act as trustee under the state’s law. A bank or trust company with trust powers can therefore be the only trustee on a Fannie Mae loan.

Freddie Mac’s rules require the person who created the trust to be a trustee. A financial institution that customarily performs trust functions may serve only alongside that person, as a co-trustee. A privacy trust with a bank as the only trustee therefore fits a Fannie Mae loan and fails a Freddie Mac loan, and a Freddie Mac loan puts your name on the deed as one of the trustees.

A friend, a relative, your accountant or your lawyer serving as the only trustee qualifies under neither agency. Whether a newly formed trustee company that is not a bank qualifies as Fannie Mae’s institutional trustee is a judgment each lender and title insurer makes for itself, and neither guide answers it. Both agencies also require the trustee to hold the power to mortgage the house for your loan, and both require you, the person who created the trust, to be underwritten and to sign the note in your own name. For a home you will live in, Fannie Mae requires at least one person who created the trust to occupy it.

The lender decides which agency your loan is sold to, and most lenders add their own requirements on top of the guides. A trust drafted before that question is answered can be the wrong trust. The full side-by-side of both agencies’ trust rules is on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rules for a trust mortgage.

The Mortgage Puts Your Name Back on the Record

A conventional mortgage to a revocable trust carries your signature, and the mortgage is recorded in the same county records as the deed. Fannie Mae requires each settlor whose credit qualifies for the loan to sign a statement of acknowledgment on the mortgage, placed after the borrower signature lines, agreeing to be bound by its terms. Freddie Mac requires each underwritten settlor to acknowledge the mortgage on Freddie Mac’s prescribed form. Both agencies also require the trust’s complete legal name in the signature blocks. A buyer who chose a bank as trustee to keep the deed private still signs a recorded mortgage that names the buyer and the trust.

A married buyer’s spouse can appear on the mortgage too. When the house is the family’s homestead, Florida’s constitution allows the owner to mortgage it only when joined by the spouse, and Freddie Mac’s rules require every signature state law needs to create a valid lien or waive a spouse’s rights. Lenders therefore have the spouse sign the recorded mortgage even when the spouse is not a borrower.

A revocable trust with an institutional trustee keeps the deed private and leaves the mortgage public. For a buyer whose aim is to keep a name out of a search of the county records, a financed purchase through a revocable trust falls short of that aim.

Practice pointer. Ask the lender for its trust signature page for a Florida loan before the trust is drafted. Fannie Mae’s sample signature forms are written for California, and each lender adapts them for the state where the house sits, so the lender’s own page shows exactly how your name and the trust’s name will read on the recorded mortgage.

Paying Cash vs. Financing

A cash purchase leaves the cleanest record. With no mortgage, the deed to the trustee or the company is the only recorded document from the closing, and the trustee’s name is what a search of the county records returns.

A financed purchase that keeps the borrower off the mortgage is possible through a Florida land trust and Freddie Mac’s land trust rule. Under that rule, each beneficiary who is a borrower signs the promissory note in that person’s own name, and the note is not recorded. The land trustee signs the mortgage. Each borrowing beneficiary also signs a collateral assignment, which pledges the beneficial interest in the trust to the lender. Freddie Mac sets conditions for these loans. Every beneficiary must be an individual, the trustee must be a corporation or financial institution that customarily acts as a land trustee, the house must be the trust’s only asset, the trust agreement must declare the beneficiary’s interest to be personal property, and the property must be a 1- to 4-unit home, a second home or an investment property.

Two records can still name you on a land trust loan. A married buyer’s spouse joins in a homestead mortgage, as explained above. And because the beneficial interest is personal property, Florida’s land trust statute has the lender perfect its lien under the commercial code, which a lender may do by filing a financing statement (a public notice of a lender’s lien) naming you. Freddie Mac requires a valid collateral assignment and leaves that filing to the lender. Ask the lender, in writing and before the purchase contract, who will sign the mortgage and whether it will file a financing statement.

Fannie Mae accepts land trusts only on terms it negotiates with a lender, so an ordinary lender working under the published Fannie Mae guide cannot make the loan. Lenders who keep loans in their own portfolio set their own rules for trusts and companies. The land trust loan, step by step, is on can you get a mortgage on a Florida land trust.

What Privacy Does Not Buy

A privacy structure keeps your name out of a public search, and nothing more. The trustee, the title company, the lender and the insurer all hold records that identify you, and a court can order any of them produced in a lawsuit, a divorce or a criminal investigation. A trustee served with a subpoena answers it.

A privacy structure is also not asset protection. A revocable trust belongs to the person who can revoke it, so your creditors reach the house as if you held it yourself, apart from what the homestead protection already shields. A land trust beneficiary’s interest is an asset a creditor can reach as well, a point our Florida land trust page explains. An LLC gives a liability shield for a rental and takes away homestead for a home you live in.

Your daily accounts identify you too. The homestead exemption is claimed by a person, so you file the application in your own name with the county property appraiser. Utility, insurance and homeowners’ association accounts are opened by someone, and a hazard policy has to name the trustee as the owner. A buyer who wants a home address kept out of reach of a specific person should plan the whole household, not only the deed.

What It Costs

Government costs, including recording, are additional and passed through at cost. Posted fees are honored for 90 days. We never quote a mortgage rate or promise loan approval, because the lender decides both. The full schedule is on our pricing page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The examples below are hypothetical and do not describe any client.

The television meteorologist. A local on-air personality is buying a house in Orange County with a conventional loan and wants the address kept out of a records search. Her lender confirms in writing that it sells loans of this kind to Fannie Mae. She signs a revocable trust named for her grandmother’s street, with a Florida trust company as the only trustee, and the trustee takes title at closing. The deed names only the trust company. She signs the recorded mortgage as settlor, so her name appears on that document, and she accepts the trade because the deed itself shows only the trust company.

The cash buyer. A retired physician in Collier County pays cash for a condominium he plans to rent out in season and wants nothing recorded that names him. He buys through a land trust with a professional trustee, and the land trust agreement names his revocable trust as the beneficiary so the interest passes at death without probate. He is told that a revocable trust as beneficiary rules out a Freddie Mac land trust loan later, since that rule requires individual beneficiaries, and he decides he will not borrow on the unit.

Sources of Law

• Fannie Mae Selling Guide B2-2-01 (borrowers must be natural persons, with exceptions for inter vivos revocable trusts and for land trusts “in those states where the beneficiary is an individual,” permitted “on a negotiated basis”). Retrieved 2026-10-16.
• Fannie Mae Selling Guide B2-2-05 (trustees must include the individual establishing the trust or “an institutional trustee that customarily performs trust functions in and is authorized to act as trustee under the laws of the applicable state”; power to mortgage; occupancy by an individual establishing the trust for a principal residence; title vested in the trustees with no trust exceptions). Retrieved 2026-10-16.
• Fannie Mae Selling Guide B8-5-02 and E-2-04 (trustees sign the security instrument; each settlor who is a credit applicant signs a statement of acknowledgment following the borrower signature lines; signature blocks carry the complete legal name of the trust). Retrieved 2026-10-16.
• Freddie Mac Single-Family Seller/Servicer Guide §5103.5 (Living Trust; trustees must be the Settlor or a Settlor and co-trustees, and “A financial institution customarily engaged in trust functions in the applicable jurisdiction may serve as a co-trustee”; Security Instrument acknowledged by each Underwritten Settlor on the Exhibit 9B form; trust agreement or certification reviewed). Effective 07/02/2025. Retrieved 2026-10-16. Reading note: Exhibit 9B itself was not reviewed, so this page does not quote its wording.
• Freddie Mac Guide §5103.6 (Land Trust; “All beneficiaries of the Land Trust must be individuals”; trustee “a corporation or financial institution customarily engaged in the business of acting as trustee for land trusts”; property the only asset; beneficiary-borrowers sign the Note individually; “The trustee of the Land Trust must execute the Security Instrument”; collateral assignment) and the Guide glossary (a Land Trust beneficiary’s interest must be personal property). Effective 07/02/2025. Retrieved 2026-10-16.
• Freddie Mac Guide §4101.6 (the Security Instrument must be signed by each individual whose signature state law requires “to create a valid lien, pass clear title, waive inchoate rights to property”). Retrieved 2026-10-16.
• Art. X, §4(c), Fla. Const. (the owner of homestead real estate, “joined by the spouse if married, may alienate the homestead by mortgage, sale or gift”). Text verified against the in-repo constitutional transcription, 2026-10-16.
• Fla. Stat. §689.071(3) (a recorded deed to a land trustee vests legal and equitable title in the trustee whether or not it refers to the beneficiaries or the trust agreement), (6) (beneficial interests are personal property only when the recorded instrument or trust agreement so declares, otherwise real property), (8)(c) (chapter 679 governs perfection of a security interest in a personal-property beneficial interest). Retrieved 2026-10-16.
• Fla. Stat. §605.0212(1)(e) (a limited liability company’s annual report states “The name, title or capacity, and address of at least one person who has the authority to manage the company”). Retrieved 2026-10-16.
• Reading note on the market fee figure: the $165 to $300 annual range is what professional land trustees and a title company publish, collected 2026-10-15. It is a market observation, not a rule, and any trustee’s fee is set by that trustee.
• Reading note: each lender applies its own requirements on top of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guides, and a lender may decline a trust or land trust loan the guides would allow.

What I Check Before a Home Is Bought in a Trust’s Name

The acknowledgment form in Fannie Mae’s signature rules has a blank for the complete legal name of the trust, a blank for the date of the trust instrument, and a signature line labeled for the trust settlor. The form is added to the mortgage after the borrower’s signature lines, and the mortgage goes to the county recorder. The line is easy to sign without noticing (it sits in a stack of closing papers), and it is the line that puts the buyer’s name back in the county records. In 14 years of law practice I also litigate deeds after they fail, which enhances the practice of drafting deeds.

A common question I hear is, “If a bank is my trustee, is my name off everything?” The answer is no when the purchase is financed, and the acknowledgment line on the mortgage is the reason.

Having read both agencies’ trust rules side by side, I have a few take-home points.

The first is the trustee. Fannie Mae accepts a bank or trust company as the only trustee, Freddie Mac does not, and neither accepts a friend, a relative or a lawyer as the only trustee. I want the lender’s answer on which agency the loan is going to before I draft the trust.

The second is the name. Both agencies put the trust’s complete legal name on the note and the mortgage, so a trust named for its creator undoes the deed that leaves the creator off. A name chosen for privacy costs nothing at drafting.

The third is the structure. When privacy and a conventional loan both matter, a Florida land trust financed under Freddie Mac’s land trust rule keeps the beneficiary off the mortgage, and a revocable trust does not. The land trust brings its own conditions, and the first step is finding a lender that makes the loan.

Avoid buying in your own name with a plan to deed the house into the trust after closing. The deed to you records your name, and the second deed records you again as the grantor. My honest limit is that the lender decides. Each lender applies its own rules on top of the agency guides, and I cannot tell from this page whether yours will close a loan to a trust with an institutional trustee, or to a land trust at all. That answer comes from the loan officer, in writing, before the contract is signed.

Updated on October 16, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. General information about Florida law, the published Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guides, and our posted fees, not legal advice, and no prediction of any outcome or any lender’s decision. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this page. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.