1031 Exchange and DST Advisor in Orange County, CA

An advisor whose home market is Orange County

Being based here changes the conversation in small, useful ways. We know what an owner of a Costa Mesa industrial condo, a Santa Ana fourplex or a Laguna Beach rental is likely to be weighing, and we can read a county settlement statement quickly. We also know the limits of local knowledge: the exchange rules are federal, the heavy tax facts are the state's, and the replacement property is usually outside California. So the county matters for the sale and the closing, and the state rules and the structure of the exchange matter for everything after.

What we do not do is pretend to be a storefront. There is no office to walk into, no published street address and no map; the firm works by phone and video, and that is how an Orange County seller reaches us too. The form below and the booking page are the two doors.

What an Orange County sale costs at the recorder's counter

The Orange County Clerk-Recorder's fee schedule lists the documentary transfer tax at $0.55 per $500 of consideration, the standard county rate under state law, alongside its recording fees. That is a tax on the deed, charged on the relinquished sale whether or not the proceeds go into an exchange, and it is a small fraction of what a Los Angeles seller pays under Measure ULA; our closing guide to California city transfer taxes covers which cities add a charge of their own.

The larger closing-day item is state withholding. California withholds 3 1/3 percent of the price unless the exchange exemption is certified on Form 593 before closing, and the intermediary then withholds only on boot over $1,500. We confirm the certification is in escrow's file on the first call; the guide to Form 593 in a 1031 exchange has the form, and the California exchange page has the 13.3 percent rate, FTB 3840 and the Proposition 13 rule with their sources.

Coastal and inland Orange County rentals raise different questions

Along the coast, from Seal Beach through Huntington, Newport, Laguna and Dana Point to San Clemente, the rentals we see are often houses, duplexes and small apartment buildings bought decades ago, sometimes with a season of personal use, and the questions are about the long-held Proposition 13 base that ends with the sale, the depreciation recapture on a building that has been fully written down, and whether a partly personal-use property qualifies at all. Our pages on the vacation rental and the former home turned rental answer the qualifying question.

Inland, around Irvine, Anaheim, Orange, Fullerton, Santa Ana and the freeway corridors, the sellers are more often owners of industrial condos, small retail centres, medical suites and larger apartment buildings, and the questions are about replacing the loan, moving from active management to a passive holding, and splitting a building among partners or heirs who want different things. The who we help hub has a page for most of those situations, and the where to start page routes you by the problem in front of you.

What a DST or a direct title security does for an Orange County landlord

The two structures we place most Orange County sellers into both take the proceeds out of a building you run and into property you do not. A traditional DST gives you an interest in a trust that already holds stabilised property with its financing, leases and management in place, treated for section 1031 purposes as an undivided fractional interest in that real estate under Rev. Rul. 2004-86. A direct title security puts a single net-leased property into your own single-member LLC, with fixed rent for the lease term and the sale decision kept by you. Where a loan has to be replaced, a cash out DST covers the debt figure with a small share of the proceeds.

Both structures are private placements offered to accredited investors by private placement memorandum. They are illiquid, there is no public market for the interests, distributions or rent can be interrupted or stopped by a tenant default, and the property can sell for less than it cost, so an investor can lose principal. A proposal sets the risks beside each recommendation, and what you own in a DST explains the structure before you read any offering.

How a first meeting works

You send the form or book a time; an advisor reads the request personally and confirms a phone or video call. On the call we ask where the sale stands, what loan comes off at closing, where you live, how much income you need from the replacement and who inherits it, and for an Orange County property we add the Form 593 certification and whether you want to stay in California. If you have the closing date, the loan payoff and your adjusted basis to hand, the proposal can be built from that one call; your CPA checks the basis and the debt figure before anything is signed. The eight steps that follow, through identification, document preparation, funding and the years after closing, are on the process page. For the wider region, see the Southern California page.

Questions Orange County owners ask