3 rentals, 1 sale, 1031, best way to go about it?

[Nelson Leal]

Hello out there,

Been a while since my last post when I was snatching up some out of state rentals. Did a great job, got lucky and now I have 3 properties that I'm considering selling from my portfolio. I get emails, calls, texts, mailers, etc all the time for these properties for years. Now, I'm thinking it's time to unload them and buy bigger. The kicker, I'd like to sell them all in one shot. It would be my first time doing a 1031 and don't want to attempt to sell 3 properties to 3 people and roll that into 1 1031 buy. The timing to do all of that and being a newbie doesn't give me confidence. However, selling all 3 to one buyer, I can roll with that.

So, to get that done I know I'll have to sell to an investor and not an end users. Less money, however that's the trade off I'm good with it. Question is....what's the best way to go about that. Bigger pockets, local network, some other site, group, something I'm not thinking of to find those type of buyers? Any advise would be great. I've done a good job of buying, properties that are either great cashflow or great on equity ready to flip.....problem is I've never done well selling to end users, thus being open to taking less and selling to investors.

Thoughts?

[Dave Foster]

@Nelson Leal, Reverse engineer how you buy. Where did you search to find properties. Go to those avenues with your properties - REIA and investor groups, meet ups, talk to several realtors beat the bushes etc. It can be done. But if they are all that attractive you might find that doing a consolidation 1031 exchange and selling three to buy one larger asset might be easier than you think.

There's a large amount of wiggle room on when they need to close.  Remember each exchange is going to have a 45 and 180 day window.  As long as you sell your three properties close enough together so that your replacement property can go on each 45 day letter and close within each 180 days you're golden.  Actually the key to watch for are the dates of the first sale.  You just need to close the other two so they can fit within the 45 and 180 of the first sale.  That's actually quite a bit of time.

And of course your back up would be that if one property sells and the other two are taking too long you simply identify and buy a property that will only meet the reinvestment requirement of the first sale.  Then maybe you're able to combine the second two into one larger.