Welcome back to Incorporating SuperPowers. If you are in real estate, you are going to want to listen to this episode, because we’re going to be talking about charitable real estate. And it’s not what you think it is, it’s much bigger than that. And I know a lot of you, especially if you’re a real estate agent, when I say charity and real estate together, most of you go, “Hell no, I don’t get paid.” Right? My guest is here to debunk that.

My guest today is Cami Baker. She is the founder of the International Alliance for Charitable Real Estate, is a nonprofit organization that assists other nonprofits through charitable donations of real estate properties. And we’re going to talk about this topic and how to explore this. Cami, this is an area that I think is huge for expansion, that gives not only real estate agents new ways of generating revenue for themselves, but it creates meaningful and purposeful relationships with nonprofits that people care about. So Cami, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you for having me. When I think about the name of your show, having superpowers. My superpower has always been being able to see the connection and where the money is being lost. And so when I learned about the charitable gifting of real estate. I was a real estate agent for 15 years. And I know that they love to take listings, love to make money, love to get full commission. So the first thing I want the real estate agents to know is not only do you get paid for the charitable gifting of real estate, you get paid full commission, guaranteed.

Wow. So folks, did you hear that? If you’ve got a property, you’re not sure what to do with it. You wanted it to go to a good cause, you can still get paid for it, it’s just knowing how. So that’s where your agency steps in, right? So before we get into a little bit more about your agency, I want to talk a little bit more about some of the laws that go into the charitable giving. I mean, I’ve always known that you could donate a car, you could donate a boat, you could donate a house, but it’s always been kind of this concept of out there, right? And I got it. I get my little tax write-off. But it’s more than that, especially when it comes to something like real estate, where there’s not a whole lot of incentive for somebody to donate a property if the real estate agent is not going to get paid, right? So talk to me about what are the rules in the book? What does that look like?

Well, this is a win, win, win all the way around is that this rule, this law has been in law since 1917. So for over a hundred years, the federal government of the United States has wanted to encourage philanthropy. And so they said way back a hundred years ago, “Hey, if you donate your property to a nonprofit, number one, you pay no capital gains tax.” So for someone who’s been on the 1031 exchange train, meaning deferring their capital gains, deferring for 10, 20 years. And now they got all this deferred capital gains. This is a great way to get rid of that, you donate the property to a nonprofit, no capital gains tax. And 100% of the appraised value is used as the basis for the tax deduction. In other words, if it appraises at a million, but for some reason, it sells for 850, and all the other expenses, et cetera, you still write-off based on the million dollar appraised value.