All Forum Posts by: Nadine S.

Thanks to everyone for their replies (love this website!) and thanks to Steven again for the tax side that I definitely needed to know. I am not surprised by the warnings against the family aspect of this and normally I would be right there with you all but there are a lot of other details not mentioned that make this situation more simple or safe then it appears but thank you.

To Jon 'All those "hopefully"'s worry me. Before you jump in you should have a much better repair estimate and selling price estimate than "hopefully".' My hopefully's are there in the sense that we know renovations can very often go beyond the budget due to unforeseen issues or sometimes just doing more than originally planned. We (mostly my husband) are very knowledgeable with home improvements and repairs and have done our research on what needs to be done and what we plan to do and are in the process of figuring out the overall costs of these and will plan in some cushioning as well. As for the hopefully related to the profit, I know that we will have a gain with almost anything we do because of the overall condition of the home and the location but because it is a little over an hour away and the effort that we will be putting into doing this we are 'hoping' that it isn't just a minimal profit so that it makes it worth all the hassle...of course this is an unknown but we have fingers crossed.

Thanks again to everyone and I have a feeling I'll be on here again in the future!

Nadine

Hi everyone! I made my first post just the other day and was so pleased by the quick and informative replies I figured I would try another one.

My husband and I have the opportunity to purchase a home at a very good price from a family member that is now in an assisted living home. We are planning to put about $20k into it (hopefully that will be our max) and then hopefully sell it for a decent profit. With that information, I now have a couple questions:

1) Since it is a family to family purchase is there anyway to buy it without having to put 20% down?

2) I believe from the threads I've read so far I think we would be taxed at the ordinary income rate but just want to confirm.

3) Here is the tricky part. Since the house is paid for and the money from the sale is not needed immediatly we have the opportunity to renovate the house over a 6-9 month period before actually purchasing the property, however we would be responsbile for paying utilities and monthy property taxes during this time. This would be great for us because we could put our money towards the updates only vs. a mortgage payment and the updates. However, I just realized a caveat with this situation. Under normal circumstances if you spend $20k on updates you should be able to deduct this amount, along with some travel, meal, etc. expenses when you sell the home; if we are spending this money before we technically purchase the property will we have any way to claim these expenses?

Thanks in advance to everyone that is able to offer any advice/insight!

Thanks for the link Steve, I definitely think we will be good.

Thanks to both you and Brian!

Thanks so much Steve! It is great information and what I was hoping to hear since that is what I had been planning for when we made the decision to rent vs. give it away. Since I have your attention on this subject I figured I'd just confirm one more thing if you don't mind to make sure I'm still on the right path. We got married in 2009 and I believe we filed jointly for that year. It was his primary residence until Sept 2009 and we sold the house last month (August 2012). So, I believe it will qualify for the ownership/use guideline but it is so close that I just want to make sure.

Thanks again!

Hi Brian, thanks for responding so quickly. Neither of us is on each other's title so that part is okay. We have filed our taxes jointly the past couple years though so I wonder if we would be able to file separately this year in order to avoid the tax?

If anyone has further information to add I would greatly appreciate it and thanks again Brian!

Hi everyone! I have a question concerning capital gains and I've read through many threads but unfortunately I've not found a scenario that quite matches my situation. Hopefully one of you can help me out.

My husband and I both owned homes when we got married, we were unable to sell so we rented his house for the last couple years and lived in my house. Recently we were able to sell his house and with a gain (although not huge still a gain). He owned the home for 11 years and did live in it for 2 out of the past 5 years so it does qaulify under the ownership and use guideline so based on that alone I believe we would qualify for the tax exemption.

Here is the tricky part, we are now planning to try to sell my home and there would be a gain as well (if not we won't sell). I have owned this house for 4 years and have lived in it the entire time so it would also fall under the ownership and use guideline for tax exemption.

My question is, can both properties receive the exemption since they fall under the acceptable guidelines and will not exceed even the $250k maximum or will only our current primary home qualify?

Thank you all so much for reading and any information you can provide!