What strategies can be used to reduce the equity in investment real estate?

There are endless strategies. For example, you may try to depress the value of your property so it has less equity susceptible to creditors. For instance, you might give purchase options to 'insiders,' or decontrolled entities to purchase the property at about 70 percent of fair market value. This probably would not be a fraudulent transfer. The option holder then has first claim to the property at the option price which defeats the creditor's rights to claim the full equity. Of course, the option must be timely recorded before the creditor's attachment, but this arrangement will depress the property's value by eliminating the 30 percent equity otherwise claimable by the creditor. Or, as another example, you may assign your rents to a third party as security for a loan. That will impede the creditor's rights to the cash flow. There are many more possibilities.