Legal Question in Business Law in California

I doubt that you ever would be able to keep your name out of public records. A corporate broker in California must have a qualifying individual real estate broker. That broker will always be of public record with the Department of Real Estate, regardless of how the corporation is formed.

Mr. Roach is correct that your name would have to be public record as the responsible broker for the office, unless you hire another broker to be the broker of record. You can, however, keep ownership of the corporation off record. If you have trusted friends or family to be the officers of the corporation, your name would not have to appear on the annual filings with the Secretary of State. If you have an attorney form the corporation you would not be listed as the promoter, and you can use CT Service or similar company as the agent for service of process. You then have the shares issued to the trust. The only problem is if you are trustee, because the shares have to be issued to "[person's name], Trustee of the [name of trust]." If you use the attorney who set up the trust or the corporation, or a professional trust service, however, you avoid that point of name disclosure as well.

If you want to keep your name out of the public records, you'll need to find another licensed human beling to be the broker of record for the corporation. The DRE records show the name of the broker of record (necessarily an individual) and are accessible by the public on the Internet.

To answer your question, however, yes, a living trust can "own" a corporation by owning 100% of its issued and outstanding common stock. It could also effectively control the corporation through ownership of a majority of the stock.

You can't. Every brokerage must publicly disclose and display the license of its broker, you. You are seeking to violate the DRE rules, which would lead to lose of your license and discipline.