Every apartment owner who decides to sell faces the same fork in the road. List the building publicly and let the market compete for it, or sell quietly off-market to a buyer your broker already knows.
Plenty of California investors dream about the same move: sell the LA apartment building, 1031 exchange into a property in Texas, Nevada, or Florida, and escape California’s 13.3% income tax for good.
In a normal 1031 exchange, you sell first and buy second. That works fine until the perfect replacement building shows up before your current one has sold, and you’re forced to either let it go or blow up your tax deferral.
Third Street runs east to west across Central Los Angeles. It starts in Beverly Hills, passes through the Fairfax District beside The Grove, skirts Hancock Park and Koreatown, drops into Westlake, and ends downtown at Alameda.
Two buildings sit on the same South Los Angeles block. Same year built, same unit count, same square footage, same condition. One sells for meaningfully more than the other.
Inside a city of roughly five and a half square miles, you currently have 68 for-sale townhomes delivering to buyers, a fully affordable apartment building of more than 90 units working through financing, …
You’ve owned the building for fifteen years. It’s worth far more than you paid. The loan balance is low, the equity is substantial, and you’re tired of the 11pm plumbing calls.