While i'm not thrilled with the article, as it generally lumped structured sales in with an article ripping up private annuties, 1031 exchanges and other questionable real estate gain schemes, they at least spelled my name properly and got me located in Scottsdale, AZ.

You can read the full article here, although you will have to register with Forbes, which is free to do.

As you'll read in the article, which is generally hostile to the concept of tax deferral of real estate property gain, they tend to take the approach that all products designed to defer gains are some how anti-consumer and not worth the effort. While I would agree that private annuities were totally abused by the planning community, and that 1031 exchanges are probably the next big area of IRS scrutiny, they gloss over the strong tax status and history of installment sales. Just because it has a fixed annuity and assignment attached to it doesn't make it suspect, as they would imply, it actually makes it stronger as you end up with Prudential or Allstate as the payor of the installments and guarantor of payments.

Hopefully the article stimulates more discussion of the concept and more in depth analysis of it's benefits and drawbacks, but again, they got the name right and I still encourage you to read it and see what you think.