Updated September 28, 2026
An owner in Denver hasn't set foot in his Koreatown building in three years. He manages it by phone and a property manager he trusts, and when it came time to sell, his first question wasn't about price — it was "how do I even do this from here?" The mechanics of an out-of-state sale are more routine than most absentee owners expect. What actually determines the outcome isn't distance. It's how much oversight the owner keeps from wherever they are.
If you live in Denver or Chicago, you are a US person for tax purposes, and none of FIRPTA's federal withholding rules apply to you — that regime is specific to sellers who are foreign persons under the tax code, not domestic owners who happen to live outside California. Your situation is a logistics problem, not a tax-withholding problem, and it is a much simpler one to solve.
Out-of-state residency does put you in a category that matters for one thing: California's real estate withholding rule treats non-resident sellers as squarely in scope for the standard withholding at closing, absent an exemption. This isn't a penalty for living elsewhere — California residents face the same withholding on investment property sales. Build it into your net proceeds model from the first conversation regardless of where you live.
A broker runs the marketing process, schedules and conducts buyer walkthroughs, and manages inspector access without requiring the owner on site. Photography, rent roll assembly, and buyer Q&A all happen through the broker and, where relevant, the on-site property manager. The building doesn't need you standing in the hallway for any of this to work correctly — it needs a broker who over-communicates with you by phone and email, since you can't independently observe what's happening the way a local owner could.
Most transaction documents can be signed remotely, either through a mobile notary who comes to you, a remote online notarization service where your state permits it, or by mail with standard overnight shipping for anything that needs a wet signature. None of this is exotic — escrow companies handle out-of-state and out-of-country sellers routinely and have established processes for it.
For an owner who cannot easily coordinate signing windows around escrow deadlines, a limited power of attorney authorizing your attorney or a trusted representative to execute specific closing documents on your behalf can remove timing friction. This needs to be set up with your attorney well before closing, not improvised the week escrow is set to close — a rushed power of attorney is more likely to have a gap that causes a delay than one drafted with time to review it properly.
Wire fraud targets exactly this scenario. An out-of-state seller who never sees the escrow office in person is a more attractive target for a fraudulent wire-instruction email than a local seller who can walk in and confirm details face to face. Verify wiring instructions by phone, using a number you already have on file for your escrow officer — never a number or a link contained in an email, no matter how legitimate it looks. This is the single highest-consequence step in an out-of-state closing, and it is entirely within your control.
Distance is not the variable that decides whether an out-of-state sale goes well. Oversight is. Owners who stay engaged — asking for regular updates, reviewing the marketing package before it goes out, confirming every wire instruction independently — do just as well selling from Denver as they would selling from down the street. Owners who go quiet and assume the team will handle everything are the ones who discover a problem after it's already cost them money. The preparation mistakes that cost LA sellers the most apply the same way whether you're local or three states away; distance just makes it easier to miss them if nobody is watching closely.
Selling from out of state is a solved problem — remote showings, remote signing, and power of attorney where needed all work smoothly with a team that has done this before. The full sale process, from pricing through close, is the same one described in how to sell an apartment building in Los Angeles. Stay engaged at the same level you would if you lived three miles from the building, and the distance stops mattering by the second week.
Do I need to fly to LA to close the sale?
No. Documents can be signed remotely through a mobile notary, remote online notarization where available, or overnight mail for anything requiring a wet signature.
Does living out of state affect my tax withholding?
It puts you in the non-resident category for California's real estate withholding, which applies the standard rate at closing absent an exemption — the same mechanic that applies to many California resident sellers of investment property too.
Should I get power of attorney set up before I list?
Only if your schedule makes it genuinely hard to coordinate signing around escrow deadlines. If you can sign remotely on a normal timeline, it's an extra step you don't need.
Michael Sterman is Senior Managing Director Investments at Marcus & Millichap.
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