Kudos to Radius Commercial Real Estate & Investments Principal Steve Golis, who was recently honored with the Santa Barbara Association of Realtors’ Jack Kelly Award for performing last year’s most challenging 1031 exchange. Golis was recognized for a deal involving the retail space at 1711 S. Broadway in Santa Maria. The transaction closed in September.

A so-called 1031 exchange is a strategy employed by many real estate investors to defer capital gains taxes by selling one property and then acquiring another similar property within a specific timeframe.

Golis, along with Brian Johnson and Jon Standring at Radius, previously represented the joint sellers of a 63-unit apartment complex in Isla Vista, a deal that closed in June 2013 for $14.3 million. Each owner held a 50 percent stake in the property, and the Radius agents were asked to find separate replacement properties and perform independent exchanges, the firm said.

For one of the clients, they found a viable property in Santa Maria valued at more than $7 million. After helping the seller untangle from an issue with an existing loan defeasance and negotiating the price down, Golis’ next hurdle was the purchase loan. Radius noted that its client had only 25 percent to put down and finding a lender willing to finance the rest was tricky, but Golis reportedly worked his pool of contacts and found one.

Oh, and just to make matters a little more complicated? The buyer lives in Russia. “The whole transaction was handled with an 11-hour time difference,” Golis said in a statement. But “ultimately, both clients ended up getting out of a non-cash-flowing asset and into properties that deliver a double-digit return.”