Some U.S. documents must be notarized. It is absolutely guaranteed that there will be some of these in any real estate transaction.

It is possible to sell out of one real estate investment and acquire another without incurring tax. This is called a tax-deferred exchange, or is sometimes referred to by the operative tax provision--Section 1031.

One frequent feature of such a transaction is that you will park the cash from selling your property with a third party, who then uses it to buy your desired new property and deed it to you. This person is called an intermediary. You do this because if you take the cash in your pocket you trigger tax liability. If you don't touch the cash, you don't pay tax on sale of your property.

There's an obvious problem. What if the intermediary steals your money? It happens from time to time. Moral of the story: pick highly stable, reputable outfits. Look at the amount of money involved and ask yourself where you'd want to keep it safe from predators and creditors, in-laws and outlaws.

Here's a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office about one such case. The intermediary used $9 million to trade options. Surprise, he lost the money. Now he's looking at jail time. Here's the text of the press release: