All Forum Posts by: Curt Bixel

Thank you all for your advice.  Can you recommend a few good people to help me with my taxes in Columbus, Ohio?  

Again, the basics of my situation are:

- full time high school teacher.

- 9 rental properties total. (16 doors total.  3 are Short Term Rentals)

- Married filing jointly

- one daughter in college. 

O.K. So, at this point, unless I suspect that things might be found in my taxes that could lead to some substantial benefit, I might as well just get TurboTax and enter it myself.  Does that sound about right?  

Quote from @Russell Brazil:

Im shocked that a tax attorney is only charging you that amount. Id expect a tax pro to be charging you $3500, and a tax attorney to be more like $5k in your situation.

@Natalie Kolodij what would your estimate be?

And what would be included in this service?  I am getting the impression that the tax attorney I am using is simply transferring the numbers from the sheets I am exporting from Rentec Direct into some sort of Tax Prep software and then submitting that.  

I think I am getting billed for about 4 hours, so if they were to charge 5k, that would mean they would be billing me at $1250/hr.  If, instead, you estimate that they would be taking longer than 4 hours, I am curious what it would be reasonable to expect as far as services?  Would they look through your situation in detail and make suggestions on how you could lower your tax liability?  

For accounting, I use Rentec Direct, which allows me to keep track of all expenses and then prepare reports for all of my properties.

The information the system exports seems like it is most of what is needed to prepare taxes.  I am curious if I should just go ahead and complete my taxes myself or should I continue to have them professionally prepared by a tax attorney.

The reason why I am asking this is because I don't know if I am getting reasonably value out of my current arrangment.  I have 9 rental properties and pay a tax attorney $800 per year to prepare the taxes, but every year it seems that I find a few mistakes like mortgage interest not deducted on one property and insurance not deducted on another.

I had assumed that for $800, someone was spending 4 hours entering my information and going through things to make sure I was getting all the deductions I was entitled to as well as preparing things so as to minimize the chances of an audit.  I am not sure if that is really included in the deal.  

As such, I am trying to figure out if I would be better off getting a copy of turbo tax or something and just doing it myself.  

Any advice would be appreciated.  

I just got the property reappraisals for several of my rental properties.  I am curious about the appeal process and if anyone has gone through that in Columbus.  The values are a bit arbitrary.  One thing I noticed is that most of the valuations for properties on the auditors website are about 60-80% of their real market value.  

So, if a few of mine are valued pretty much at market value, is there any sense making the argument that I would like my property valued at the same percentage of market value as the neighboring properties, or is that simply a waste of my time. 

I have been doing private lending in the Ohio area with a house flipper who is experienced, organized, and trustworthy.  I see little risk that he will run into significant difficulties with any of his flips.   I have been asking for 10% for the loans so far.  Recently, my bank has raised the interest rate it pays on savings accounts from 0.5% to 4%.

I am curious if this is signalling a significant change in the interest environment and if I should consider asking for more.  

Looking for some suggestions in the Columbus Ohio area for someone who might help me out with a few things at a duplex in Clintonville.  Here is what I need help with.

1) Installation of a 50' x 20' gravel parking pad in the back.  Involves the removal of a 15' x 20' old broken up slab.

2) Removal of brush growing along fence lines

3) Adding topsoil and reseeding the back lawn, which is about 30' x 50'.

Not sure if this is the best place to post this request for help and would be happy for any suggestions on the best forum on which to post this and similar items.  

After doing some research, it seems like the company that gave me this estimate might not be one I use in the future.  They offer a "$93 or free" sewer line snaking service that seems to be a good deal.  I was not sure how they could make much profit by offering that sort of deal.  

It seems, however, that the "$93 or free" deal may just be a way for them to get in the front door and then upgrade people to more services at some pretty high prices.  I was first concerned when they showed me an estimate that included $238 for the replacement of the blade on the concrete saw they were going to use.  I do know that some concrete blades do cost that much, but the idea that you would have to replace the blade making two cuts across a sidewalk seemed unreasonable.  I would suspect that it would take less than 3 minutes to cut through the sidewalk, and I expect that a good diamond blade would be able to cut for many hours before needing replaced.  

I have another company coming out that feels confident they can clear the lines with hydrojetting for less than $1000.  

Just sat with a service tech from a plumbing company and watched the video from the camera they pushed down the sewer line in a 4 family property.  It is a 4 inch pipe, and there seemed to be a fair amount of what they called scale.  The bottom quarter of the pipe is mostly filled with scale with a small trench running down the middle.  The full length of the pipe they said needs to be addressed is about 60 feet.  

The suggestion was to clean it with a combination of hydrojetting and some sort of spinning chains with carbide tips to break down the scale.  They will need to dig a 8 foot by 4 foot trench just in front of the house to a point in the line 9 feet below the surface, and unfortunately, under the sidewalk and front stoop of one of the units.  

The estimate for the hydrojetting and spinning chain treatment is about $10,000, and if the line ends up being replaced, the estimate was between $30,000 and $40,000.  

I curious if this seems like a normal cost for this service and what other options their might be.  The line most definitely has a problem with clogging every few years.  

Is this just a straight 25% of gross rent paid by the guests or are their any deductions before the 25% is calculated?

excise tax?