Anyone have experience with land conservation easements or farms?

[Charles Worth]

As someone with a full-time job and W2 income in a very high tax state I have been looking at ways to maximize my tax deductions. As part of this strategy it was suggested I look into land conservation easements. However, I have had trouble finding companies that seem to specialize in offering out of state investors these type of properties (hard to find good properties for this in NYC for sure) especially with some type of property management. Another alternative would be a syndicator in this area but again I have not really been able to find much here or elsewhere. 

Has anyone here utilized easements? If so, what was your experience?  Has anyone done it from out of state where they actually own large plots of land or farm land as both an investment and for easements? Any experiences or referrals would be appreciated. 

Kudos to @Brandon Hall for the suggestion to look into easements, always has good suggestions for us RE investors. 

[Ashish Acharya]

@Charles Worth , 

CE is one-time deduction that you get. Usually, there are companies that pull money together from investor like you in a partnership and you would get the K-1s from the partnership with huge charitable deduction. 

I dont know if you know this but CE is not a traditional investment.

So you need to understand that you are not buying a property that is giving you a tax deduction from its operation. The partnership you invested will donate the "inflated easement right" on the land it bought and get the fair market value deduction of that easement as a charitable deduction. People invest in them ( partnership) each year to get a charitable deduction. IRS has ramped up audit on these transactions. These transactions are already scrutinized by IRS as they were moved to " Listed transaction" since 2016. 

We have dealt the 100s of them last few years. You basically would buy an interest in the partnership for 50k, and you would get the deduction for 200k as charitable distribution in the K-1s that flows through you. 

Not saying you should not invest, but make sure you understand the risk of this kind of transactions.