Nonprofit charities regularly own or receive donations of real estate. In the real estate world, holding title to property in an isolated limited liability company is so common that many lenders’ and brokers’ template forms refer to “______ LLC,” with the blank for the buyer’s name. Some real estate lenders require loan collateral to be owned by a separate and newly formed limited liability company, to reduce possible claims of past creditors. Until recently, charitable nonprofits faced uncertainty when using the single-member limited liability company (“SMLLC”) structure so common in the for profit world, because only the parent is granted IRS charitable (tax-exempt) status and Oregon law required the corporate form of ownership to be eligible for property tax exemption. This created concern over whether gifts transferred directly to the SMLLC would be eligible for tax-deductible donations and in many cases resulted in denial of Oregon property tax exemption, based solely on ownership.
