When a client asks whether to keep a rental, sell it, or exchange it, the question doesn't go to one person. It goes to six.

The agent tells them what the property would sell for. The lender tells them what they could borrow against it. If an exchange is on the table, a sponsor shows what a replacement property could pay, and a qualified intermediary confirms whether the exchange works. The CPA tells them what selling would cost in tax. The attorney tells them what it means for the estate.

Every one of those answers matters, and in my experience most of them are good. Each person is doing the job they were hired to do. But each of them answers one piece of the question, and the pieces don't add up to a decision on their own.

Each of those jobs also has a natural finish line. The agent's work ends at the sale and the lender's at the loan. The sponsor's ends when the investment is placed, and the intermediary's when the exchange is complete. The CPA and the attorney answer the questions they're asked. That's how good specialists work, and the client is better off for it. But it means the question that sits above all of them, whether anything should happen at all, isn't anyone's job. No one dropped it. It simply never got handed to anyone.

What's missing is someone who puts every answer next to the plan. The question underneath the client's question is whether this property is doing what the plan needs it to do, and what each choice does to retirement income, to liquidity and to the estate. That question only makes sense from where the advisor sits.

In June I wrote about a household with four rentals. One of them earned about $46,000 a year, and the other three lost a combined $55,000. Ask an agent which one to sell and you'll get four valuations. Ask the CPA and you'll get four tax bills. All eight numbers can be right, and the client can still sell the one property that was carrying the plan. Getting it right takes someone looking at the whole household, not one property at a time.

Part of the reason the advisor often isn't in that conversation is the data. The numbers that answer the planning question live in tax returns, closing statements and the client's own spreadsheets. Most plans carry each rental as a value and maybe a rent, and it's hard to own a decision about an asset the plan only knows by one or two numbers.

That's also why the advisor can say something no one else in the deal is there to say. The advisor is the one person who can be paid to say, "It's a good property. Keep it." When that voice is missing, the decision still gets made, one piece at a time, and the advisor hears about it at the next review.

Owning the decision doesn't mean doing every piece of it. The agent still sells, the CPA still prepares the return, and the attorney still drafts the documents. It means the advisor frames the question, asks each of them for their part, and brings the answers back to the plan before the client signs anything. Most advisors already work this way with insurance and taxes, where someone else carries out the transaction and the advisor makes sure it fits the plan.

Everyone touches a real estate decision. In a lot of the households I've seen, no one owns it. The advisor is the one person in a position to.

Market Implications Right Now

The tax data gives a sense of how many of these decisions happen. On 2023 returns, individuals filed 54,746 like-kind exchange forms, according to the IRS. Those exchanges brought in $55.4 billion of replacement property and deferred $23.7 billion of gain. Since 2018, only real property qualifies for an exchange, so all of it is real estate, though not all of it is rentals. And that's only the households that chose to exchange. It doesn't count the clients who sold outright, refinanced or bought, and the most recent IRS count of rental property sales by individuals is from 2015.

Behind each of those forms is typically the same cast: an intermediary holding the proceeds, agents on the sale and the purchase, often a lender, and sometimes a sponsor. And every one of those exchanges changed a client's plan. There's a new property with a new basis, and the deferred gain carries forward, waiting for a future sale or for the step-up in basis at death. I couldn't find any data on how many of those decisions involved the client's financial advisor. That's the number I'd most like to see.

The year-end planning meetings happening now are a natural place to start. Ask each client who owns property one question: is anyone talking to you about it right now? An agent, a lender, a sponsor, a friend with a deal. If the answer is yes, the decision has already started, and the plan should be part of it before anything closes.

Leveridge models exactly this for every investment property in a client's portfolio: hold, sell, or exchange.