45-day identification strategy for New York City 1031 exchanges: sourcing, screening, and locking a written candidate list before the deadline closes.
The 45-day identification window starts the day the relinquished property closes and does not pause for board reviews, financing questions, or a slow search. For a New York City exchanger, that means a Manhattan condo, a Brooklyn multifamily building, a Queens industrial site, and a passive Delaware Statutory Trust interest all have to be screened, priced, and reduced to a written list inside six and a half weeks. There is no extension available for a difficult market or a distracted seller. Our job is to compress the sourcing work into that window without compressing the diligence that keeps the list realistic.
A property counts as identified only when it is described unambiguously, typically by legal description or street address, in a signed document delivered to the qualified intermediary or another party involved in the exchange before midnight on day 45. A verbal mention to a broker does not count. A property under contract does not automatically count either unless the identification requirement has been separately satisfied in writing. We build the notice against the closing date, not the calendar date the exchanger happens to remember, since the two are easy to confuse when the START EXCHANGE REVIEW closes near a holiday or a weekend.
Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island each move at a different pace and price point, which is an advantage for sourcing if the search starts wide. A seller exiting a Manhattan office asset might screen Brooklyn multifamily for stable cash flow, Queens or Bronx industrial for yield, and a national net-lease or DST allocation as a passive fallback, all inside the same 45 days. Working across boroughs and asset classes early gives the exchanger real choices by day 30 instead of a single remaining option by day 44.
Multifamily candidates in New York City almost always carry some rent-stabilized units, and that changes the underwriting before a candidate is worth putting on the identification list at all.
Most New York City exchangers use the three-property rule, identifying up to three candidates regardless of value, because it is simpler to track than the value-based alternatives. The tradeoff is that a short list has less room for surprise: if a co-op board rejects an application or a lender pulls a term sheet, there may be nothing left on the list to fall back on. We keep a ranked backup candidate ready even when the primary list has only three names, so a rejection late in the window does not force an unplanned switch to the 200% or 95% rule after the fact.
There is no extension for the 45-day identification deadline, regardless of how close a deal is to signing or how reasonable the delay was. If the deadline passes without a valid written identification, the exchange fails and the deferred gain from the START EXCHANGE REVIEW becomes taxable in that year. We treat day 45 as a hard stop from the first day of engagement, building the sourcing calendar backward from that date rather than forward from when the search happens to start.
No. There is no extension available for market conditions, financing delays, or co-op board scheduling. The only exception recognized under federal disaster relief provisions applies in declared disaster areas, which is unrelated to ordinary transaction friction.
Not by itself. A property under contract can satisfy identification if the contract itself contains an unambiguous property description and is delivered to the appropriate party by day 45, but exchangers should not assume a pending contract automatically counts without confirming the notice requirement is met in writing.
There is no universal number; it depends on how much closing risk the exchanger is carrying. A seller with one strong, already-negotiated deal may list just that property, while a seller facing co-op board risk or financing uncertainty typically benefits from two or three ranked alternatives under the three-property rule.
If none of the identified candidates close within the 180-day exchange period, the exchange fails entirely and the START EXCHANGE REVIEW is treated as a taxable transaction in the year it closed. This is why backup candidates and realistic screening matter more than listing the maximum number of properties allowed.
A price is not required by the identification rule itself, but tracking one internally helps confirm compliance with whichever counting or value rule applies, especially the 200% or 95% rules. The written notice only needs to describe each property unambiguously, typically by legal description or address, delivered in writing before day 45.
180-day closing coordination for New York City 1031 exchanges: title, lender, QI, and board-approval timelines tracked against one closing date.
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Three-property rule strategy for New York City 1031 exchanges, used when high per-property values make the 200-percent rule too tight.
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200% rule identification strategy for New York City 1031 exchanges: how to list more than three replacement candidates without breaching the.
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95% rule identification strategy for New York City 1031 exchanges: when an unlimited candidate list makes sense and what closing certainty it.
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