Tax implications for deciding not to rent out property

[Jo Jennings]

We are in the process of buying our first investment property. We aren't going to do this as a regular thing. Our situation is that we wanted to purchase a home in the area we want to move to in a couple of years and then rent it out until we can actually move. This would make it so that we have someone else making the payments and would allow us to deduct things such as trips to the area and depreciation.

We are a week or less from closing (assuming no hiccups). The home will be financed as an investment property because our initial intention was to rent it out. Now COVID-19 has become an issue. We are concerned about getting a renter in that can simply choose not to pay and we cannot evict in our area due to COVID-19. We are also considering accelerating our timeline in regards to this home becoming our primary residence, so we don't want to get someone in with a lease just yet.

What can we do tax-wise? If we let the house sit vacant for the rest of the year, can we still claim it as an investment property and deduct our closing costs, depreciation, travel to close the deal, etc? How long can we leave it vacant without the IRS flagging us? Or are we stuck paying a higher interest rate as an investment property and not able to have any tax benefit? At that point, are we better off to change it to financing for a second home instead of an investment property, or are we too far into the process for that (we are just waiting for our appraisal and then we can close)?

The only thing we know definitively is that we want this house as our home for retirement and we don't want to rent it out for at least several months while we see how everything plays out in terms of the economy, landlord restrictions due to COVID-19, and whether or not we are going to move into the home sooner than we thought.

Advice is much appreciated.