How to find out land value for depreciation

[Praveen Ashok]

My parents used to live in their home, which was bought in 2009. They moved out and started using it as a rental property in June 2016. This is the first year I am doing taxes for this property. Prior years were done by CPAs. So In order to calculate the depreciation:

a. Should the cost of depreciation be the value the property bought in 2009? 

b. If so how can I know the value of land in 2009? Is this available in the county's website?

thank you.

[Linda Weygant]

You definitely want to get the depreciation schedule from the prior accountant as it's important to have prior year depreciation rolling forward correctly.  This includes not just the building basis and land basis, but also any other assets that were added, such as appliances.

You'll also want to get the accumulated depreciation rolling forward correctly.  Otherwise, if you forget that you didn't get that done correctly, you can have some major errors later if/when you don't have all of the depreciation figured into the selling transaction.