How to Best Expense Travel Costs

[Andrew Wehn]

Hello Everybody,

I live in Northern California and grew up in the Scottsdale, AZ area, where my family still lives. I own a town home there as a rental property, and I wanted to figure out what advice you could give me to classify my trips home as travel expenses to my property, especially when the main goal may be seeing my family for Christmas or other holidays/vacation weeks. I was thinking about asking the tenants if I could vacuum the garage with the tank vacuum at my parents' house, but I don't want to seem creepy and I don't want to have to explain everything I'm doing, but it's something I'm open to. I also thought about giving my tenants air filters, but I don't want to get in the habit of giving them stuff (super nice folks but you know what I'm saying). I thought about reaching out to the HOA and see if I could volunteer to trim the trees for an hour or something but I feel like that's a dead end because I don't think they need a volunteer for a random hour. I thought about maybe meeting my agent who helped me buy the property at a coffee shop so that she can hand me off something important for the property that I haven't already printed (darnit!).  I want to do this all by the books and make sure what I do is legitimate, but I really want to be able to expense all my trips home because let's face it, that's the beauty of investing in real estate.  Please send any advice my way.  It goes without saying that I'll review everything with an accountant when that time comes, but wanted to hear from you all on your thoughts.

Thank you!