When you buy a rental property, the IRS normally has you write it off a little at a time over 27½ years — the whole thing, at one rate. But a house is not one thing. The dishwasher will not last 27 years. Neither will the carpet, or the fence. A cost segregation study goes through the property, works out what each part is and what it is worth, and puts the shorter-lived parts on their own shorter schedule.
Yes. This is an ordinary, long-established part of the tax code, not a loophole somebody found. The IRS publishes its own guide telling examiners how these studies should be done and what makes a good one. The thing that matters is whether the study is backed by evidence — which is exactly why we show you where every single number came from.
We do not know, and we are not going to guess. What you can actually deduct depends on your income, whether the property is rented, what else is on your return, and several things that have nothing to do with your house. Anyone who quotes you a number before seeing your return is selling you something. We tell you what your property is made of and what each part is worth. Your accountant turns that into a number.
We cannot promise you anything about that, and you should not trust anyone who does. What we can do is make sure that if anyone ever asks, every line in your study points at the thing it came from — the second of your video where we saw it, the page of your closing statement, the price book entry it was costed from. To be clear about the limits: we do not represent you before the IRS and we do not provide audit defence.
It is good at spotting things — a dishwasher, a range hood, a fence, the hundred ordinary items a study is made of — and it tells you the exact moment in your video where it saw each one, so you can go and look for yourself. What it cannot do is be certain. That is the whole reason nothing goes into your study until you have looked at it and said yes.
No, and we would rather say so plainly than let you assume otherwise. Nobody here visits your property, watches your video or reviews your study. You are the one who confirms what we found, and you should have your own accountant look at the finished study before it goes anywhere near a tax return. We are not accountants or engineers.
If you can take a video on your phone and answer a few questions about your own house, you can do this. There is nothing to install, nothing to measure and no software to learn. You can stop halfway through and come back next week; it will be exactly where you left it.
No. It does not have to be a property you bought this year. There is a form your accountant files to catch up the depreciation you did not take in earlier years, and it is a routine thing for them. That part is their job rather than ours — but no, being late does not rule you out.
The closing statement from when you bought the place, and your property tax bill if it is to hand. If you cannot find them, you can type the figures in yourself instead, and the study makes a note that they came from you rather than from a document.
It is read by software, including AI services we use to process it, and stored on your account. No employee watches it as a matter of course. Before you upload a closing statement, black out anything that is not about the property — those documents often have a Social Security number on them, and we do not need it.
Nothing at the moment — we are not charging while we are still building this. When we do start, the price will be in front of you before you are asked for anything, and it will not depend on what your study finds.
That is a real question and it is one for your accountant. Depreciation you have taken changes what happens when a property is sold, and that belongs to your tax return rather than to your house. We stop at what the property is made of.