Another Cost Segregation Question! House Hacking

[Brett Chupka]

It seems like cost segregation has been a hot topic since podcast episode 689 and I'm going to keep that trend going. 

I too am trying to see if there would be any benefit to self performing a cost seg on a house I purchased this past July, new investor! Here's some quick background:

- $400k purchase price with 3% down payment. Owner occupied SFH.

- The land is not too valuable, maybe $50k-$75k. 

- 5 bedroom single family home - 4 bedrooms rented out since September. 

- I do plan on long term holding. I also plan on purchasing another property early this upcoming summer and hopefully flipping a property this upcoming year as well which is where I thought this would really come in hand. 

- I haven't done any major renovations and don't really plan to in the short term. 

- Full time W2 employee. 

I went and listened to a BP youtube episode with Yonah Weiss and he mentioned there is very rarely a time when you shouldn't cost segregate a new property. I spoke with my tax CPA preparer and he kind of dismissed cost segregation right off the bat. He mentioned that since I hadn't done any large improvements to the property that it probably wouldn't be too beneficial. Does that seem accurate? I felt that with the big difference between money down and purchase price it would be a good option. Should I just start looking for another CPA's opinion? 

Any insight is appreciated! Thanks

[Greg Scott]

Your CPA may be right and Yonah wrong, although your CPA seems confused about the idea that you need to have made a lot of improvements to take advantage of this.

Since you are a W2 employee (and presumably not a real estate professional), your ability to take advantage of extra depreciation will be limited.  Because of this, you need to carefully weigh the costs vs. benefits.  If you are a real estate professional or you are talking about large assets AND intend to keep them for more than a year or two, yes Cost Seg almost always makes sense.

I'd pose a question to your CPA in a different way.  "If a cost segregation analysis gave me $100K in bonus depreciation this year, how would it affect my taxes in the next few years?"  If you anticipate large capital gains from another property, then you may see a worthwhile difference.  If your regular depreciation is already more than covering your cash flow, you will likely see little to zero benefit.