According to this story by Carol Lloyd in the San Francisco Gate, it is not a pipe dream but a way to invest in real estate. The technique is not for the faint of heart, but it also may allow you to use these assets to invest in real estate if you like.

Was this some newfangled real estate scam aimed at fleecing retirees of their hard-earned dollars? Not exactly. IRAs have been around since 1974, when Congress offered tax benefits for these personal retirement accounts. From the beginning, sophisticated financial advisers have been using them to buy real estate for their wealthy clientele.
Actually, you can invest in just about anything — foreign as well as domestic real estate, boats, investment companies and start-ups — as long as the assets are not used by the individual investors or their immediate family. That’s called self-dealing and isn’t considered fair game for tax-free investments. And there are three types of investments that remain verboten: collectibles (furniture, art, jewelry), life insurance (tough to retire when you’re dead) and stocks from S corporations (taxed as partnerships, they can’t have tax-free investors).
So why hadn’t I heard of it? And shouldn’t dear Mr. Schwab get fired for not telling me about it?
When I caught up with Tom Anderson, president of San Francisco-based Pensco Trust Corp., he seemed familiar with my frustration.
“Most big-name banks which offer IRA accounts only provide these services for their elite clientele,” explained Anderson. “If you have a million, they might look at you. If you have 50 million, they’ll really look at you. If you have less, well, you don’t get that service.”
In other words: Wrong income bracket, dearie.  via the SFGate

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