Using real estate such as your house, farm, commercial property, vacation home, or investment property to fund a gift allows you to preserve your cash assets, receive significant tax and income advantages, and make a larger charitable gift than anticipated.
Perhaps you’re ready to move into a smaller house, a condominium or a retirement home. Maybe you have a vacation home you no longer use. Possibly you’d like to give up farm life for a place in town.
If you own property that is fully paid off and has appreciated, an outright gift may be the simplest solution. You can deduct the fair market value of your gift, avoid all capital gains taxes, and remove that asset from your taxable estate. You can transfer the deed of your home or farm to Wounded Nature–Working Veterans today, and keep the right to use the property for your lifetime and that of your spouse.
Outright Gift
The home you’re leaving can be given to Wounded Nature–Working Veterans outright. If you have owned it for more than a year, you can receive a tax deduction for the full current market value (rather than your lower cost basis), and you can avoid capital gains tax on the appreciation. Your gift is deductible up to 30 percent of your adjusted gross income, with a five-year carryover allowed for any excess.
Charitable Remainder Trust
Another alternative is to transfer your unmortgaged home in which you no longer live or other unmortgaged real estate to a charitable remainder trust. This can secure a life income for you and a survivor (such as your spouse), and provide Wounded Nature–Working Veterans with much-needed assistance at the termination of the trust.
How it works: Once the property has been transferred to the trust, the trustee can then sell it and invest the proceeds in income-producing securities, which become the source for the income payments to you and any other recipient you name.
To donate real estate to Wounded Nature–Working Veterans, please contact Rudy Socha.
**The information on our Web site is not intended as financial or legal advice. Please consult your qualified advisers as you consider philanthropic gifts.