The hole is boarded up now with a couple of jacks placed for support so the whole building doesn't collapse.I will be checking into public adjusters and structural engineers so we have someone more impartial than the insurance company's guys determining repair costs.Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

This perhaps would lend strength to your "intent" argument should one of your 1031s ever be audited.

Having gone though an audit from the IRS myself, I cannot tell you enough times how happy I was that I had one.

However, in many cases you likely won't be able to obtain by-laws until you are under contract.I would have your attorney include a specific "HOA" rider in the contract for this exact reason- It basically would require that you have ample time to review the governing docs of the HOA, such as master deed, current by-laws, current year’s budget, and last two years of audited financial statements, association meeting minutes, etc. 

You can get away with a lot of stuff until you get audited.

Applications for anything are an audit trail in legal matters and lease applications are the source documents for real estate lease agreements.

I think, people are confused when talking about being agent and hiring a broker.Agent works for a broker and all the contracts made between that broker and the client, not agent and client.When agent is leaving a brokerage, he doesn't take listings with him - they belong to his broker.Same with property management: the broker is responsible for all misconduct of the agent - it's broker escrow account has to comply with requirements of the State, not agent's......agents don't have the escrow account to keep the security deposits of Tenants.It's broker who get audited, and put his license on the line even if he totally unaware what his agent is doing.More of that, personal listings of the broker's agents must comply with all the laws which agents might be not aware of because they just work with clients and not with controlling instances.You can do whatever you feel like doing until someone complains - and Tenants or/and owners do it - to Division of RE.

It would seem to take an audit of that part and see what is being used and what is not is key.

If I submit it like one property for the purposes of taxes (I use TurboTax) as opposed to individual, is that asking for an audit?

Hi Mark, it's worthwhile to do a personal audit and reflection and decide how much time, knowledge, energy, and money you want or are able to put in to determine which REI strategy to pursue.