Tag Archives: investing

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Realty Researcher Expects Housing Rebound to Continue

Money

In a series of weekly blogs, analysts from John Burns Real Estate Consulting remain mostly optimistic about the housing rebound, but raised caution flags about flippers.

“We are advising our clients in areas with a high percentage of flippers to take into account the risk of artificial price appreciation,” stated a company vice president. “While successful flips are more likely to be reported than unsuccessful ones, the profits described to the public wildly surpass the reality of the recovering market.”

Read more…

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Save Big Bucks on Your Taxes

We’ve been looking at the new IRS regulations on how to classify repairs and improvements for tax purposes. The voluminous regulations contain some things that are pretty good for owners of residential rentals and commercial properties, and some things that aren’t so good.

Among the good things is a safe harbor for materials and supplies. An expense for any property that comes within this safe harbor may be currently deducted.

Exactly what are materials and supplies? Find out…

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A Rental Management App for Small-time Landlords

Pendo Rent, a rental management software application for landlords with just a handful of properties to keep track of, launched earlier this month, with the ability to collect and track online payments, create to-do alerts and manage finances.

The Vancouver-based firm is targeting “citizen landlords,” those property owners who want a simple, organized way to manage tenant applications, and maintain tenant profiles, advertising and other aspects of renting a property.

Read more…

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Good News for Owners of Smaller Residential Rental Properties

A recent column (“IRS finally provides guidance on building repairs vs. improvements“) explained that the IRS has finally issued the final version of its monumentally long and complex regulations explaining how to deduct improvements and repairs to business property, including commercial buildings and residential rentals.

The final regulations, which take effect Jan. 1, 2014, contain several pleasant surprises for small-business owners, including owners of rental properties. One of these is the “safe harbor for small taxpayers” (IRS Reg. 1.263(a)-3h).

This new reg allows a qualifying taxpayer to elect to not apply the IRS’s complex new improvement regs to an eligible building if the total amount paid during the year for repairs, maintenance, improvements and similar expenses does not exceed the lesser of $10,000 or 2 percent of the unadjusted basis of the building (usually, its cost).

Read the details…

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It Pays for Landlords to Qualify as a ‘Real Estate Professional’

Until this year, landlords who earned profits from their rentals didn’t have to worry about whether they qualified as a “real estate professional” for tax purposes. The only reason to seek to qualify as such was to avoid application of the incredibly complex passive loss rules.

These rules are designed to prevent landlords from deducting rental losses from their other non-rental income. So if you didn’t have rental losses, these rules didn’t concern you and you could care less whether or not you were a “real estate professional.”

This has now changed. Qualifying as a real estate professional will now benefit many landlords who earn profits from their rentals because, by doing so, they won’t have to pay the Net Investment Income tax (NII tax) on them.

Read the details…