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Do not confuse capital gain with equity. There is no comparison between the two. Equity is the amount of money you have in your pocket after you have sold the property and paid off all related liabilities and mortgages. As an example lets say you bought a property $30,000 ten years ago, it's free-and-clear and has basis of $20,000. If you sold that property today for $115,000, and paid out $15,000 in closing costs and commissions, you have equity of $100,000. That's the amount of cash you would get out of the closing. However your capital gain on this property would be the difference between your basis of $20,000 and your adjusted sales price of $100,000, or $80,000. Result: If you sell instead of doing a §1031 Exchange, you would be obligated to pay a capital gains tax on the entire $80,000. Example with Mortgage: If you had mortgage of $90,000 on this property, you will need to repay this loan at the time of closing. This results in net cash to you at the closing of only $10,000 ($100,000 less the loan payoff of $90,000). But your capital gain tax would still be $16,000. It is in this area you must be extremely careful not to trap yourself with a regular sale. You are almost bound to exchange in a case like this unless you have the additional funds to pay the taxes. In larger transactions with larger dollars and leveraging, the situation only gets worse. |
