Interactive Tool
The 1031 Decision Map
Every situation an exchange can land in — property type, intent, timing, boot, entity, related parties, state — mapped to one answer: can you do the exchange?
Nothing you enter here is collected, stored or transmitted. There is no sign-up.
Four answers, not two
An exchange question almost never resolves to a clean yes or no, and the two answers in the middle are where the money is lost. Every situation here resolves to one of four.
The exchange works
Full deferral is available.
Yes — but part of it is taxable now
The exchange is valid. The arithmetic is the problem.
Yes — if you change something specific
Not available as structured. It becomes available, and the change has a deadline.
This is not a 1031
A workaround is not the answer here. There are real alternatives.
The expensive mistakes are the middle two, read as the first one.
Walk your exchange through it
Question 1 of 11
Where this tool stops
The question this tool will not answer for you is how much. Working that out means your actual basis, your depreciation history — including anything a cost segregation study reclassified years ago — the debt on both sides, and what your state does about gain it thinks is still owed to it. Those inputs are not something to guess at in a browser, and a number produced without them is worse than no number.
We run that model with clients before day 45, when the fixes are still available. Bring a live transaction and we will walk it with you.
Book a Strategy CallWhat it walks you through
The path behind those eleven questions covers the ground below. Most of it never comes up in a given transaction — the point is to find the two or three things that do, before they harden into a filed return.
What you are exchanging
Real property and what is not — leaseholds, easements, water and mineral rights, DSTs and TIC interests, partnership interests, foreign property, and the pieces of a hotel or a farm that quietly are not real property at all.
How it is held
Investment, business use, dealer inventory, a flip, a former home, a vacation property against the day-count safe harbour — and the replacement-side intent that is where most challenges are actually won or lost.
The arithmetic
Whether the exchange is fully deferred or only partly, and which of the thirteen forms boot takes is about to apply to you.
Timing and process
The 45- and 180-day clocks, the identification rules, the return-due-date trap, who may act as your intermediary, and where the money is held.
Who owns it
Same-taxpayer and vesting, a lender demanding a new entity, partnerships where the partners want different outcomes, and related parties on either side of the deal.
The state layer
Clawback states, withholding at closing that has to be claimed in advance, and the transfer taxes an exchange never waives.
We keep a fuller reference — every scenario above broken out, with the statute, regulation or case behind each one. It is a working document rather than a brochure, and we are happy to walk the relevant part of it with you.
Choosing a Qualified Intermediary
To execute a 1031 exchange, using a Qualified Intermediary (QI) is required. If you’re like most, your exchange likely represents a significant portion of your net worth and you don’t ever want to doubt that the QI is putting their needs ahead of yours. For this reason, Main Street Alternatives recommends that you consider using a QI who has met the highest ethical standards set by the Federation of Exchange Accommodators.
Fact currency
Verified 11 August 2026. Section 1031 was not amended by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21, July 2025). The operative rulebook is still the 1991 deferred-exchange regulations plus T.D. 9935 (2020).
Please read
Educational material, not tax or legal advice, and not a recommendation to enter any transaction. This tool applies general rules to the facts you enter; every exchange turns on its own facts, and the state layer alone can reverse the answer. Several points it covers are genuinely unsettled. Nothing here substitutes for a modeled after-tax analysis and advice from your own tax counsel before you commit.