Do you have an appreciation gain in a piece of real estate that isn’t your primary residence (it must be held for investment purposes) that you would like to sell, but don’t want to pay the capital gains taxes? Did you know there is an easy way to avoid these taxes in this situation? 1031 Tax-Deferred Exchanges have been around since 1921 and allow you to do just that. These gains can be deferred again and again if you sell the property in the future. I personally did this when I sold a piece of Austin commercial real estate property I co-owned in 2006 and was able to parlay most of my profit (I took some in cash) into two rent houses which I still own today. I didn’t pay taxes on the sale of the commercial property, but simply deferred it into the future. Since I plan to use the rent houses as retirement supplement, I don’t plan to ever sell them so there would be no taxes due until my death when they would become part of my estate. 1031 Exchanges can be done with any “like-kind” property which is very broad and can include investment real estate, vacation houses, raw land, oil & gas, etc. I have a contact with someone who does these exchanges and their company has completed over 160,000 exchanges….call me and I’ll be happy to provide you with their contact information.
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