Conversion Of "Rental Property" To Personal Use Does Not Blow 1031 Like Kind Exchange

Most businesses use some kind of commercial real estate. Leasing property has been a bargain in the past year. Prices for buyers are very favorable, though commercial mortgages are still subject to pretty tight underwriting. Many commercial tenants have renegotiated their leases to lower their rents. Going forward, though, good deals are going to be more difficult. 2011 is the year to lock in current rents. If you are going to need more space in the future, you might want to commit this year while landlords are still feeling desperate.

MONTREAL — This year’s Forbes list of the world’s richest people includes 23 billionaires under 40 — and one shrewd Canadian real estate mogul more than twice that age who finally made the cut. Unlike Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, he doesn’t wear a hoodie. Montrealer Marcel Adams made his fortune building shopping malls. Now, some 60 years after buying his first piece of property on Quebec’s City’s fashionable Grande-Allée, the 93-year-old joins donut king Ron Joyce and 27 other Canadians on the business magazine’s list of the world’s wealthiest individuals for 2013.

If Texas and seven other states want to secede from the Union, it won’t be on Barack Obama’s watch. The White House formally responded Monday to a petition signed by more than 125,000 for Texas to secede by rejecting the motion, saying “As much as we value a healthy debate, we don’t let that debate tear us apart.”

Greg Mankiw says that even though European growth rates have been comparable to America’s, we should still fear the European economic model because America is richer than the biggest European countries: Here is GDP per capita, adjusted for differences in price levels (PPP), from the IMF, for the United States and the five most populous countries in Western Europe:

I was just taking a look at a couple of properties in Zillow and found it interesting how big the real estate tax bite can be. I have 2 rental properties and the real estate tax cost is 15% and 12% of the rental income. At least for my area Zillow underestimate rent rates (the vacancy rate is very low and properties in general rent within days or weeks – at rates 10%+ higher than Zillow estimates on average -based on my very limited sample of just what I happen to notice).

I once had a tenant secretly move 15 children into her 800-square-foot house.

Flickr image courtesy John Snape under Creative Commons license The IRS isn’t saying.