Form 8824 Preparation Support

A closing statement alone rarely covers everything Form 8824 requires. The CPA needs the relinquished property's transfer date, the identification date as filed, the replacement property's receipt date, a description of both properties, and enough closing detail to calculate any boot and the carryover basis. Multi-property exchanges add complexity, since value and basis often need to be allocated across more than one replacement asset, and DST replacements bring their own reporting treatment that a generalist preparer may not have handled before.

A provider who hands over a single closing statement and calls the job done has not actually prepared the file for reporting; they have forwarded a document.

Research Triangle Park and the office, flex, and life-science space around it bring their own reporting wrinkles. A number of buildings in and near the Park sit on ground leases rather than fee-simple ownership, and a replacement acquisition structured as a leasehold interest needs its own valuation and basis treatment that a preparer unfamiliar with ground-lease transactions can easily get wrong. Tenant improvement allowances are another common trap: whether the landlord or the incoming tenant funded lab buildout, office finish, or specialized mechanical systems affects how that value should be allocated between land, building shell, and improvements, and that allocation feeds directly into the depreciation schedule and the eventual basis calculation on Form 8824.

Build-to-suit acquisitions tied to a tech or life-science tenant's expansion timeline sometimes close in phases, with a shell delivered first and specialized lab infrastructure completed and invoiced later. Each phase can generate its own closing statement and change order, and all of it needs to be reconciled into a single acquisition cost before the CPA can calculate basis with any confidence. A replacement property acquired through a DST sponsor focused on RTP lab or flex product carries an additional layer, since the sponsor's own reporting package needs to be cross-referenced against the exchanger's individual closing documents rather than assumed to match automatically.

Timing adds a further wrinkle in this corridor. Tech and life-science tenant expansion or contraction can move quickly relative to a construction schedule, and a replacement building delivered later than originally planned can push documentation gathering right up against the CPA's filing deadline. Exchangers working with counsel across Wake, Durham, and Orange counties on a single phased acquisition should expect closing paperwork to arrive from more than one law office, which is exactly the kind of fragmentation this service is meant to resolve before it reaches the CPA.

Before assuming a preparation support service has done its job, check the file against what the CPA will actually ask for.

• Relinquished property transfer date and closing statement
• Identification notice as filed, with the exact date and description language
• Replacement property receipt date and closing statement for every property involved, including phased or build-to-suit closings
• Any boot calculation already run, so the CPA is not starting from zero
• Ground lease terms and tenant improvement allocation detail for any leasehold replacement property
• A summary chronology connecting all of the above in one document

If any of these are missing, the CPA still has to do the assembly work, just later and under more pressure.