Category: real estate investment

Raich Montana Properties LLC Named one of the Best Brokerages by the Land Report

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Raich Montana Properties LLC is proud to be among Land Report’s Best Brokerages for the ninth straight year. This recognition is a high honor for my company which specializes in quality ranch, recreational and residential Montana real estate. Without question, the spectacular public lands surrounding our community give the region a natural competitive advantage. Our mission is to conduct business that will not negatively impact our agricultural heritage, clean flowing waters, wildlife habitats, economy, and quality of life. Our economy continues to grow in sustainable, enduring ways, with many aspects of the economy tied to the high-quality area amenities, and proximity to Yellowstone National Park. We are truly grateful for our success.

If you are interested in Montana Real Estate, Montana Ranches for Sale, Montana Fly Fishing Properties for Sale, Paradise Valley Montana Real Estate, or Livingston Properties for Sale, please Contact Raich Montana Properties LLC Today.

SOLD – Crow Hollow Ranch

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LEVINE RANCH-3128Crow Hollow Ranch is situated in Montana’s legendary Paradise Valley. This majestic property which was once inhabited by the Crow Indians encompasses a diverse topography with 198 +/- deeded acres, over a half mile of Suce Creek, a beautifully designed period-style farm house, historic caretaker’s home, and log cabin…all tucked privately into a dramatic valley with National Forest, and BLM lands surrounding the ranch. List Price $3.6 Million

How The Fiscal Cliff Legislation Affects Real Estate

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NAR Government Affairs summary of “fiscal cliff” legislation as passed by the House and the Senate. President Barack Obama has signed the agreement into law.

Real Estate Provisions in “Fiscal Cliff” Bill

Below is a summary of real estate related provisions in the bill:

Real Estate Tax Extenders
• Mortgage Cancellation Relief is extended for one year to Jan. 1, 2014
• Deduction for Mortgage Insurance Premiums for filers making below $110,000 is extended through 2013 and made retroactive to cover 2012
• 15 year straight-line cost recovery for qualified leasehold improvements on commercial properties is extended through 2013 and made retroactive to cover 2012.
• The 10 percent tax credit (up to $500) for homeowners for energy improvements to existing homes is extended through 2013 and made retroactive to cover 2012.

Permanent Repeal of Pease Limitations for 99% of Taxpayers

Under the agreement so called “Pease Limitations” that reduce the value of itemized deductions are permanently repealed for most taxpayers but will be reinstituted for high income filers. These limitations will only apply to individuals earning more than $250,000 and joint filers earning above $300,000. These thresholds have been increased and are indexed for inflation and will rise over time. Under the formula, the amount of adjusted gross income above the threshold is multiplied by three percent. That amount is then used to reduce the total value of the filer’s itemized deductions. The total amount of reduction cannot exceed 80 percent of the filer’s itemized deductions.

These limits were first enacted in 1990 (named for the Ohio Congressman Don Pease who came up with the idea) and continued throughout the Clinton years. They were gradually phased out as a result of the 2001 tax cuts and were completely eliminated in 2010-2012. Had we gone over the fiscal cliff, Pease limitations would have been reinstituted on all filers starting at $174,450 of adjusted gross income.

Capital Gains

The Capital Gains rate stays at 15 percent for those at the top rate of $400,000 (for individuals) and $450,000 (for those filing a joint return). After that, any gains above those amounts will be taxed at 20 percent. The 250/500k exclusion for sale of principle residence remains in place.

Estate Tax

The first $5 million dollars in individual estates and $10 million for family estates are now exempted from the estate tax. After that the rate will be 40 percent, up from 35 percent. The exemption amounts are indexed for inflation.

Source: National Association of Realtors

Raich Montana Properties LLC Listed in the “2011 America’s Best Brokerages” issue of The Land Report

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This publication is known as “The Magazine of the American Landowner”. In this issue leading land brokerages in the US are listed by region. Raich Montana Properties LLC is listed under brokerages in the West (page 49).  Each real estate firm is required to provide a compilation of transactions for the year, and share the firm’s business philosophy and provide market insights.

Here’s a recap of the magazine listing for Raich Montana Properties LLC:

Who: Raich deals in ranches and recreational properties in Livingston Montana’s Paradise Valley.

Philosophy: As a one-person firm, her focus is on personal attention for each client instead of handling a large volume of transactions.

Raich’s Market Insight: Raich enjoyed a steady business during the year. She predicts there will be continued investment in this market which may result in a depletion of inventory leaving a scarcity of  truly amazing ranch and recreational properties in Livingston’s Paradise Valley.

2011 Sales: <$50 Million Category, with transactions totalling $17.1 Million in 2011 (The Land Report’s computation method).

 

It’s Official: Montanans are Happy

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While we all have plenty to celebrate as the new year begins, Montanans have extra reason to count our blessings. As it turns out, Montanans are officially happy. A recent study from two colleges compared the level of happiness by state, from Alabama to Wyoming. Montana cracked the top 10, and is the 7th happiest among the 50 states.

Science Daily (2009-12-21)  reports findings of  new research by the UK’sUniversity of Warwick and Hamilton College in the US into the happiness levels of a million individual US citizens have revealed their personal happiness levels closely correlate with earlier research that ranked the quality of life available in the US’s 50 states plus the District of Columbia. This research provides a unique external validation of people’s self reported levels of happiness and will be of great value to future economic and clinical research in this field.

The new research published in the journal Scienceon 17th December 2009 is by Professor Andrew Oswald of the UK’s University of Warwick and Stephen Wu of Hamilton College in the US.

The researchers examined a 2005- 2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System random sample of 1.3 million United States citizens in which Life-satisfaction in each U.S. state is measured. This provided a league table of happiness by US State reproduced below.

This is the first large scale analysis of happiness levels in the US but the researchers were content with simply having this large data set and ranking. They decided to use the data to try and resolve one of the most significant issues facing economists and clinical scientists carrying out research into happiness.

Researchers have to rely on people’s self declared levels of happiness — not how can you rely on those self declarations. There have been useful studies trying to match those levels of happiness to clinical signs of happiness and stress such as blood pressure. That has been useful but one cannot know for sure whether those clinical signs are themselves driving happiness or whether the reverse is true. Researchers have longed for a more clearly external set of data to test their results.

On this occasion the researchers found another parallel data set that might for the first time provide that external validation or challenge their findings. They discovered research by Stuart Gabriel published in 2003 which considered objective indicators for each individual State of the USA such as: precipitation; temperature; wind speed; sunshine; coastal land; inland water; public land; National Parks; hazardous waste sites; environmental ‘greenness’; commuting time; violent crime; air quality; student-teacher ratio; local taxes; local spending on education and highways; cost of living. This essentially allowed the creation of a rank order of US states showing which should provide the happiest living experience. This then was a truly external data set that could be used to check against the self declared levels of happiness.

When the two tables were compared they found a very close correlation between people’s subjective life-satisfaction scores and objectively estimated quality of life.

The lead researcher on the study, Professor Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick said:

“The beauty of our statistical method is that we are able to look below the surface of American life — to identify the deep patterns in people’s underlying happiness from Alabama to Wyoming. This type of study has been done for a few European countries but it is new to the United States. We are the first to be able to do this calculation — partly because we are fortunate enough to have a random anonymized sample of 1.3 million Americans.”

“The state-by-state pattern seems interesting in itself. But it also matters scientifically. We wanted to study whether people’s feelings of satisfaction with their own lives are reliable, that is, whether they match up to reality — of sunshine hours, congestion, air quality, etc — in their own state. And they do match. When human beings give you an answer on a numerical scale about how satisfied they are with their lives, it is best to pay attention. Their answers are reliable. This suggests that life-satisfaction survey data might be very useful for governments to use in the design of economic and social policies.”

Professor Oswald expressed some caution in how the results should be interpreted for the state of Louisiana in the survey following the disruption caused by Hurricane Katrina but was confident that the data on the other states was a true reflection of happiness levels saying:

“We have been asked a lot whether we expected that states like New York and California would do so badly in the happiness ranking. Having visited and lived in various parts of the US, I am only a little surprised. Many people think these states would be marvellous places to live in. The problem is that if too many individuals think that way, they move into those states, and the resulting congestion and house prices make it a non-fulfilling prophecy. In a way, it is like the stock market. If everyone thinks it would be great to buy stock X, that stock is generally already overvalued. Bargains in life are usually found outside the spotlight. It may be that exactly the same is true of the best places to live.”

Andrew Oswald/ Wu ranking of happiness levels by US State:

  1. Louisiana
  2. Hawaii
  3. Florida
  4. Tennessee
  5. Arizona
  6. Mississippi
  7. Montana
  8. South Carolina
  9. Alabama
  10. Maine
  11. Alaska
  12. North Carolina
  13. Wyoming
  14. Idaho
  15. South Dakota
  16. Texas
  17. Arkansas
  18. Vermont
  19. Georgia
  20. Oklahoma
  21. Colorado
  22. Delaware
  23. Utah
  24. New Mexico
  25. North Dakota
  26. Minnesota
  27. New Hampshire
  28. Virginia
  29. Wisconsin
  30. Oregon
  31. Iowa
  32. Kansas
  33. Nebraska
  34. West Virginia
  35. Kentucky
  36. Washington
  37. District of Columbia
  38. Missouri
  39. Nevada
  40. Maryland
  41. Pennsylvania
  42. Rhode Island
  43. Massachusetts
  44. Ohio
  45. Illinois
  46. California
  47. Indiana
  48. Michigan
  49. New Jersey
  50. Connecticut

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091217141314.htm full article

1031 Tax Exchanges for Investment Properties

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Many clients find that the 1031 tax deferred exchange is an excellent way to purchase investment property.

NCS Exchange Professionals are one of many firms specializing in assisting clients with the process of a 1031 exchange.

Finding the right property, the right loans and the right people to work with are obviously great assets when investing in real estate. There are also ways to save money when you own property by discovering what a 1031 exchange is.

A 1031 exchange or tax-deferred exchange is a method for selling a property that is qualified, and then acquiring another qualified property within a certain period of time. It is unique in that the entire transaction is treated as an exchange rather than a simple sale, which allows the taxpayer to qualify for a deferred gain treatment. In other words, sales are taxable with the IRS, but 1031 exchanges are not.

Exchanging a property represents an IRS-acknowledged approach to the deferral of capital gain taxes, and it is extremely important to understand the components involved and the intent of such a tax deferred transaction. Anyone investing in real estate should use a 1031 exchange when he or she expects to purchase another property after the sale of the current investment property. Otherwise, they would have to pay a capital gain tax that could run over 30 percent in capital gain, determined by the federal and state taxes according to where they live. In other words, when you purchase a replacement property without the benefit of a 1031 exchange, your buying power is lessened and only represents 70 to 80 percent of what it once was before theexchange and payment of taxes.

The rules that apply for a 1031 exchange are the total purchase price of the replacement property must be equal to or greater than the total net sales price of the relinquished real estate property. All of the equity gained from the sale of the relinquished property must be used to purchase the replacement. If these rules are violated, a tax liability will be accrued to the person doing the exchange. IF the replacement property purchase prices is less, there will be a tax incurred. A property transaction can only qualify for a deferred exchange if it follows the 1031 exchange rule of the US tax code and the treasury regulations.

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