DEAR BOB: My wife and I owned three rental houses on the same street. We listed them for sale with a local Realtor who found us a buyer who wanted all three. But when we figured out our capital gain would be more than $300,000 and the tax would be huge, we got cold feet. Then the Realtor told us about Internal Revenue Code 1031 tax-deferred exchanges. That sounded good, especially because my sister wanted to sell her commercial building so we could trade for it. So we went ahead and sold the three rental houses.  more...

Ronald Ray Smith, a polio victim who uses a wheelchair for mobility, began investigating multifamily apartment housing developments to test developer compliance with the federal Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 (FHAA). As part of a program organized by the local Disabled Rights Action Committee (DRAC), Smith discovered discriminatory design and construction in several developments.  more...