Introduction from the Pacific Northwest

[Jason Bauer]

My name is Jason, and about three weeks ago, I did my taxes, and for about the last 4 years or so I kept looking at the amount of money that the wife and I are paying in taxes.

I started to research ways to invest some of our money to help with our tax burden. Google led me to all kinds of links and I made the click to a blog post here at BP. It was about writing off real estate depreciation on taxes.

And so, I started looking at this BP site, and it started to get me thinking, and realizing that this real estate investment thing looks like a great fit for what I want to do in the next 15-16 years before retirement.

I've been reading, and watching the BP YouTube channel, and am looking at developing my strategy, and defining my niche.

Looking forward to attending a meet-up some time soon, in the meantime, I might be the guy asking all kinds of questions..

[Randy White]

Hey Jason!

Yes tax season is awesome with investment properties.  Talking with my CPA, there are pros and cons to the tax write offs.  Pros, for buy and hold investing I am able to write off the property value 1/27.5 of the value.  so immediately its a nice little chunk of change and you get to benefit from the cash flow on top of that...seems weird to me but I don't write the rules.  A Con to the writing off of properties is when you go to sell the place.  From what I've learned, you would be paying capital gains not only on the profit margins but also on the depreciated value.  As it was explained to me, buy at 100k, sell at 150k. I'd pay capital gains on the 50k.  If I depreciate the house on taxes, over X amount of years, I may be paying capital gains on the depreciated gap from 100k.  But, im a buy and hold guy so I'm writing it off! then 1031 it to another place in the future!  Where are you investing or planning to invest? 

Randy