California came out with a great  Deed to help with this situation.. its called an All Inclusive Deed of Trust . so its a wrap thats the ONLY way to sell if the mortgage is not formally assumed or paid off. 

Maybe there was a power of appointment or other similar provision that would have caused estate tax inclusion that you're missing a basis step-up? 

@Steve VaughanI wanted to expand on how we sold our props using wraps pretty much exclusively and AITDs ( all inclusive Deed of Trust )the benefit to the seller was this.lets say we sold a property for 100k and in today's rates we could get 9 or 10% interest..

The inclusive time is actually MORE stringent than Material participation.

Although it has a bunch of information in it that the typical developer doesn't need (specifically a bunch of civil engineering design information - which is weird since the author is an architect.)But I would suggest you would be better served not looking for an all inclusive book, but instead looking for books/information that focus on specific areas of the process.The three areas I have seen developers make their most mistakes over the years are these.Market Research: Projecting what the demand will be for a product at the time you actually bring that product to market.

However, in daily practice you have to track each bid, whether it’s an all inclusive bid or a labor only bid, in which case you have to track each payment to the contractor and each payment for materials, and be able to see how much is still owed to contractor.

State that the amount taken subject to is subject to the payoff to the date of settlement.Then, there will be a title requirements or settlement procedures recited in the standard contract, it will probably refer to a General Warranty Deed, this needs to be changed to a Special Warranty Deed or All Inclusive Deed depending on what is used in your state.

Many are looking at this with the belief that it's purpose was to ensure rental income was also inclusive in the deduction. 

Is your commission inclusive of any booking fees charged by the sites?

All I am finding is the title companies can do an All Inclusive Trust Deed and the title will transfer immediately.