Converting owner occupied to Rental Property

[James Hilton]

Greetings Braintrust,

I'm buying a SF House in IA.  It is under contract now and we are waiting on the inspection.  The plan is to live in it for a year, then convert it to a rental.  We intend to put 30-40k of work into the home (typical stuff: kitchen, flooring, bathrooms) because nearly everything is original from 1990.  

My question is about timing of the upgrades.  If we do the repairs in 2020, but don't convert to rental use until 2021, do we miss out on deducting (and depreciating) the rehab expenses?  Can we do the repairs in 2020 while it is owner occupied and still reap the tax benefits of deducting those expenses once it is converted to rental use next year?

Ideally, we would make the repairs before moving in to avoid the pain of living in an active rehab project.  But we can defer the rehab to 2021 if it makes sense.

Thanks!