All Forum Posts by: Leigh Ann Smith

We purchased a tiny house this year that was built on a trailer and plan to list it as a vacation rental on AirBNB, VRBO, etc. We won't be using it personally at all; it's strictly going to be a rental. It was purchased with cash in the name of our business that's a sole proprietorship. We do have an LLC, but we did not purchase the tiny house through the LLC.

Do we need to depreciate it over 5 years as an RV?  It technically does qualify as an RV, though we don't plan to move it.  My understanding is that we cannot take a 179 exemption and claim the entire amount in one year, is that correct?

I guess we should call it an RV rather than a house on our tax form.  We're not paying property tax on it since it's not a permanent structure.

Related question - Our sole proprietorship is a farm, so we use Schedule F (Profit or Loss from Farming). We took money from the farm account to pay for the tiny house. We haven't done anything yet with the sole member LLC we created for real estate. Our farm has a gift shop, we host events, and other things that are not strictly agricultural. Those things are part of the farm operation and our largest amount of income is from farm products (Christmas trees). So....could we include the tiny house as a farm expense since it's located at the farm, or would it be a good idea to spin this off under the LLC? If so, would we use a Schedule C to claim it or something else?

Using his phone will not be an option for him.  I've mentioned a heavy-duty case, but he's not going for it.  We have a farm, and he works outside with equipment, is climbing on and off tractors, etc. The ipod nano is small enough to fit in a tool pocket that can be closed so that it's secure.  It would be perfect if I didn't have to spend an hour trying to load it with podcasts every time.

I just thought there might be a device with wifi that would update the podcasts automatically like a smartphone does.

My husband has had an iPod Nano for years. He likes to listen to the podcasts while he works outside and doesn't want to use his phone since it could get broken.  Using iTunes is a big pain and I'd like to get him a new MP3 player that would easily download subscribed podcasts, keep his place in the podcast if he turns off the player, etc. Any suggestions?

Hahaha,  @Hersh M.!  Well, you wouldn't need a trailer if you moved it that way!

@Wesley Pittman, we only have 1 tiny house so far, and it is on a trailer.  It will be on the grid for electric, connected to water from our well, and the waste water will go to the septic.  I'm attaching a picture of the house.  This is not its final location.  It's waiting here for us to get the site ready that's beside our pond.

Yes, that's what we're doing, @Mindy Jensen.  We bought our first tiny house a few weeks ago, and we are working on the infrastructure to get it in place so we can list it as a vacation rental.  Since we were already setting up water, electric, and septic for one house, we decided to go ahead and do 3 spaces around our pond.  If the first house is staying rented enough, we'll likely put in a second one.  I was thinking of the lot rentals as a Plan B if the vacation rentals are a flop!

@Mindy Jensen, that's what I was afraid the rents would be.  I'm not sure it would be worth that amount of cash flow to have people living fairly near my house.  We live on 35 acres, so we are not used to having neighbors.  With vacation rentals, we can take a break from it at any time, but with a lot rental, not so much.  We'd be paying the utilities also, and we're paying a chunk of change to put in electric, water, and septic.  So, I'm just hoping our vacation rental plans work out!

@Wesley Pittman, I think it fits in pretty well with vacation rentals.  That's not the same strategy that @Lee Ripma is looking at, and we may end up doing a hybrid of vacation rental and renting out spots, but this is as good a forum as any.  I set up a keyword alert for "tiny", but I may need to change it to "tiny house", because I keep getting alerts when people post that a house has a "tiny bathroom" or something like that!

@Mindy Jensen,

Do you have any idea what the price range is that people would pay for tiny house parking?  We have purchased one tiny house, but we are preparing 3 spots with electric, water, & septic.  We live in an unincorporated area of our county, so no deed restrictions (yay!).  My concern is that tiny house people are looking to live economically, and economically for them might not equal profitable for us.

Depending on your market, if you're a buy and hold guy, you might want to consider leaving it as is. Even though it's dated, most of the homes in the neighborhood probably have it, so renters might not have a problem with it. And you'll never have to paint those walls between tenants! Those walls haven't been painted in 40 years, and they look just like when they were new.