TIC MLS.com -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 4/1/2006
Last Visited: 12/23/2006
When Gary Leavitt founded RealtyNet Advisors, a principal seller of properties in the tenant-in-common (TIC) market, and 1031 Exchange Place, a broker of 1031 like-kind properties, in 1997, the industry was still very new.
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Leavitt entered the TIC market for numerous reasons."I hated to see people pay the tax; I hated to have somebody sink their $200,000 in an exchange below cost basis," he explains.From the outset, RealtyNet Advisors has carved out a specialty niche in the TIC marketplace.The firm primarily acquires and markets single-tenant, net-lease retail properties with no debt."When I first started out in 1997, it was a weak market for 1031 dollars," Leavitt explains.
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"When you close, your relationship [with the buyer] was that of principal seller; the new buyer has 100 percent control of the asset," Leavitt explains.
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Leavitt is encouraging real estate agents across the country to give increased attention to the TIC market.
Currently, there are approximately 75 TIC sponsors in the United States completing transactions as securities as opposed to approximately 25 that are structuring TICs as real estate.Leavitt hopes to encourage more principal sellers to emerge from the real estate side over the coming years.He estimates that approximately half of all 1031 exchanges completed by individual (not institutional) investors during the next 10 years will be TICs.A tenant-in-common multiple listing service (TIC MLS) will be launched this year as a means to market and expand the TIC real estate industry."Our goal is that, by the end of this year, the approximately 1.5 million real estate agents in the country will know that, if they have a client in a 1031 exchange, a tenant-in-common investment would be appropriate," Leavitt says."[The broker] can go to the TIC MLS Web site and most or all of the principal sellers of TIC property will have their properties on the site."
The TIC MLS is a launching point for the expansion of the TIC-as-real-estate structure.It will serve to increase awareness of the viability of real estate agents' involvement in TIC deals and offer a platform on which hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of properties can be marketed.Since the asset involved is initially real estate, that industry is now working to increase its stake in the TIC marketplace."I firmly believe that TIC is first and foremost a real estate [transaction]," Leavitt says."It is my opinion that this is a turf war and [the real estate community] is not in the battle yet."
The TIC Real Estate Association has been launched to market the TIC MLS and bring more real estate agents into the fold.The association is an effort to organize the real estate community and ensure the survival of the industry and that those that are structuring TIC deals as real estate are not ignorant of security laws.
"I think that the TIC MLS and the TIC Real Estate Association will illustrate that we can do TIC deals as real estate and start giving more and more credibility to our industry," Leavitt says.