You're still going to have to recapture the depreciation which is part of your ordinary income, not capital gains.

The only question then is if you'd rather pay 20% LTCG plus ordinary income tax on your reinvested proceeds or 5% effective rate on maintaining your investments while harvesting the equity you've accumulated.

Hi Akhtar,This is Michael from Coldwell Banker UAE, American Company with global presence.Saw you are currently in Dubai, would love to connect with you so we can meet and discuss about what current investors do so you would be well prepared for this industry!

I know a couple of Americans who have gone so far as to repatriate to the US for a couple of years - long enough to no longer be a "tax resident" under the J tax regime - in order to complete a shuffling/1031 rebalancing of their US portfolios. 

There are many ways to avoid taxes, so nobody can give you a complete answer without knowing your entire tax situation.If your only taxable item was selling this condo, you would owe long-term capital gains on the $150,000 plus ordinary income on depreciation recapture.

Are the fireplaces the only heat source or anything out of the ordinary with them?

I made friends with billionaires, multimillionaires, and ordinary people from all over the world.

Your income is treated as active income and taxed at ordinary rates instead of the passive income we are used to with LTRs, but there might be more deductions you can find as well.After all that, if you know you want to do STRs in the long run, now might be the best time to make the jump.

Thank you, These fees arent out of the ordinary for what I typically see in my market - do keep in mind that the $2k in fees are outside of the realtors control and are charged by your closing company, she is likely estimating these amounts with what they typically see in the area.

It depends how many units, but 2-4 unit properties I'd say are $400 - $600/unit per year.I've done duplexes that are $1,800/yr and that's not out of the ordinary for a $300k property.