Paying yourself 3% commission on personal property purchases?

[Jeff Brower]

Good morning everyone. I would like to get some opinions on a situation that I have been contemplating regarding personal purchases. I am soon to be buying a 3 or 4 plex to owner occupy with an FHA 3.5% down loan. I am an agent, and my company will allow you to not pay them a split if you are buying a property for your personal residence. My plan was to buy a place, and pay myself back the 3% commission so that I can, in essence, get into the property for 0.5% down (plus closing and misc costs). I was just thinking though, if I had to pay taxes on that 'income', does this even make sense? If I choose to not charge a commission, I can get the purchase price to be 3% less, since net to the owner is really all they are worried about.

Does it make sense to roll this 3% into the purchase price if I have to pay, say, 30% of that 3% in taxes now? I hope I worded this correctly.

Example.

Situation 1: 200k purchase price, 3% commission payed by seller, I would have to pay ~30% tax on 6k. So I would 'lose' about 2k in taxes.

Situation 2: 194k purchase price, 0% commission. I would pay 0 in tax. (I would, however, have to pay the difference in capital gains if I sell for a profit in future years. And capital gains is a higher bracket if I am thinking correctly. I plan to move out after the year requirement and keep as a rental so I would not qualify for the owner occupied exemption in this hypothetical case).

What would you do?