Understanding Land vs. Property Values

[Jimmy Wen]

Hi all,

I have a newbie question for all of the experts here! The question is for my recent purchase of a duplex (residential).

How do I separate the land value from the total value of the property I just bought? There are two reasons why I asked this:

1. I was told that the land value should be not be calculated for depreciation.
2. Also, when selecting the dwelling insurance coverage, land is not included under this coverage.

How accurate it is to look up the property taxes from the local county assessor website?

[Allan Smith]

For depreciation, you should just ask your CPA how to do that. If you are doing your taxes yourself, well you should probably know how to calculate depreciation.

to decide how much to insure it for, probably shoot for about what it would cost to replace the building in build it back. I've purchased many rental units and never really had to worry about this question that much.

tax appraisal would be accurate if what you paid for the property is the same as a tax appraisal. You could use the land value as a rough estimate.