All Forum Posts by: Gillian C.

 Thank you for the helpful replies! My only disappointment was that you didn't use more caps lock in your second comment, as I was confused at which parts you wanted to indicate yelling/emphasis

Thanks so much John. I spoke with someone at the Village and they said there were no laws or ordinances for short term rentals yet and that they were "waiting to see what Chicago does" as I know there are some lawsuits being worked out in court and they expect that Chicago will come up with blanket rules for Cook maybe?  Would the compliance report have additional detail? Thanks again very much.

Hi all,

Does anyone know how easy it is to rent a unit on Airbnb in Forest Park, IL? We are looking at purchasing a property with the idea of living in the coach house but listing it on Airbnb, but want to understand the local laws and statutes around short term listings there. I called Airbnb and they were not helpful at all. Thanks for any information or thoughts on how to find this information!

@Ashish Acharya thanks so much for your thoughts.

I can’t find the rental income anywhere on the prepared forms, and I was able to tie out all of the expenses listed to expenses I provided (minus the travel mileage expense). The forms show that we’re claiming a total loss of the sum of the expenses and depreciation, but it’s not netted against any revenue.

Thanks for the generous offer. I’m going to try to get in contact with him again tomorrow with these concerns but may dm you separately. Really appreciate the time you took to reply. Unfortunately we didn’t go cheap :/

@Eamonn McElroy yes of course, I contacted him with these questions and concerns on Saturday. The fact that he hasn’t responded yet is an additional concern. Since I’m not a CPA I’m just looking to understand if the information provided is enough for other accountants to say “that’s obviously wrong” or if there’s potentially more nuance.

Hi everyone,

My partner and I bought our first property last year under an LLC. We deferred our tax filing this year (both LLC and personal) because we weren't ready in time, and are using a new accountant.

We just received a draft of the LLC taxes, and I'm concerned. In 2018 we had rents of about 20k but line 2 "gross rents" of form 8825 reads 0.

I also can’t find any reference to our travel expense (1619 miles). What line would this appear on if prepared correctly?

Lastly we had suggested a land value of 25% for the depreciation calc but the number used was closer to 10%. We’re in Chicago, the property is in Avondale. We have a private mortgage so the land never got assessed. I’d love to use 10 but don’t want to get dinged and we plan to refinance this year and want to understand how the official appraisal will affect our taxes/ depreciation if land value is adjusted up drastically in year 2. Any thoughts welcome.

In deferring our personal we didn’t make any state tax prepayment and I made the same selections on my income as a person I work with, who did owe state taxes, another thing I’m worried about.

1. Am I missing something or did this guy mail it in?

2. If the answer to #1 is yes, any recommendations / referrals for trusted Chicago tax accountants with experience in Real estate LLCs / multi families?

Thanks all!

 This is great advice that we should have implemented several months ago. We'll be on top of this process going forward.

Tons of investors I know have illegal units in their buildings, especially ground-floor units. So what happens if there is an incident (fire, for example) that originates in and/or harms someone in an illegal unit? Are you just taking on that liability in renting out an illegal unit?

Many units in our area are illegal because they either have low ceilings or have only one exit. I personally would never rent out a unit with a single exit or other serious safety issue, but what if you make it safe but it is still not a zoned unit? Are there ways to mitigate this risk or protect yourself, or does the technical  "legality" only matter if the unit is unsafe or not properly outfitted?

 Hi John, did you receive my PM? The site has been super glitchy today. The building is  9 units. I'd love a referral. Thank you!

Thanks all for these helpful tips. Here's the conclusion for those interested:

We showed the apartment at $1575 and had 7 people come through. Four were immediately interested, Two wanted to sign a lease same-day. We decided that although we had a good option with the new higher-priced tenants, that we would tell our current tenants they had one day to sign the lease or it would be given to another renter. @Mark Ainley we considered your $50 bucks idea, but didn't end up doing that because 1) we weren't sure if that was legal in Chicago (you need 60 days to announce an increase and 30 days to tell them to vacate, and we were at about day -40) and secondly because we had not communicated to them "if you don't tell us before we show it, the price may increase". We probably could have done this without an issue but felt it was more ethical to honor our offer and give them one last chance.

They're good, low-maintenance tenants and they also don't seem to mind at all when we come in to make improvements to the apartment, so we're thinking that our lower (but still increased) rent is justified with 1) peace of mind of tenants we know, 2) no apartment turnover costs and 3) ability to do small improvement projects while they are living there.

@Margie Niedecker thanks for these thoughts. I will keep this in mind when offering them a new lease - need to dive deeper into our tenant laws regarding the timelines to vacate and build leases to make sure we're protected on this front.

@Andrew Kougl good luck with your new tenants. Our takeaway from this process is to be prepared well in advance (I like Margie's suggestion of letting tenants know 75 full days in advance) and also be clear about the timeline of looking for new tenants. "If you don't accept by date X we will list the apartment. Once the apartment is listed the renewal offer is subject to increase by date Y." Putting a timeline on everything is really helpful and forces them to make a decision because there are clear, tangible consequences to waiting.