All Forum Posts by: Kyle Meyers

That is a great chart, thanks.

Just to make sure I got it right:

If the purchase price is $10,000 (line 101)
Closing costs (line 103) are $1,000
Property taxes (line 211) are $1,000

The basis would be $12,000 for land and improvements?

Steven, thanks for the help. The questions I have right now are about tax liens and deeds.

1. If a lien is not redeemed and I take possession of the property to fix up and rent out, do I report any gain or do I just have the costs of the tax lien added up to the basis of the property for depreciation?

2. If a lien is not redeemed, but I do not file for the deed or take possession, can I take that as a loss? How would I report that? Would I take the loss in the year the redemption period ends and I make the decision not to file for the deed, or the following year when my right to file for the deed expires?

I think that is likely the case. When I have contractors doing work at one of my properties they are always asking about what else I own and offering to do more work for me.

I am looking for recommendations of a CPA or tax adviser to answer some income tax questions about my real estate investing. I am comfortable doing my own tax return filing, but have a couple questions about some of the more complex deals I have been working on. Also, it would be nice to get simple questions answered quickly without doing all the research every time.

I am sure this is a pretty basic question with a straight-forward answer, but I have thought about it too much and gotten myself confused by my own thoughts.

When purchasing a rental property, it has been standard for me to receive a credit on the HUD-1 for accrued property taxes for the time the seller has owned the property, but which are not due to the county yet.

How should this amount be treated for income tax purposes? Would the amount reduce the cost basis for the property for depreciation? Does this effect how I report property taxes paid on Schedule E?

My insurance rate on one of my properties just jumped over 50% from what it was last year. My agent is checking into putting all my properties under one commercial policy to get a better rate. If that doesn't work out, I will be shopping for another company. I have heard good things about Cincinnati Insurance, but I don't know what their prices are.

I am testing out a new system to monitor vacant properties, it is a combination of a few things and not designed specifically for this purpose.

The first component is a vuezone camera system. I bought mine at Amazon.com, it is also available at vuezone.com. Currently $230 for a gateway and 2 indoor motion detection cameras. A weatherproof case for the cameras is available for $32/camera.

Second, a wireless hotspot. I am looking at the truconnect mifi or the datajack mifi. I believe they are both available for about $80.

Third, a wireless bridge. I got a trendnet 640mb for $25.

The vuezone cameras can be placed virtually anywhere, they come with mounts made for attaching on a wall, but you can set them somewhere else or purchase table, window, and ceiling mounts as well. There are no power or connection cables to the cameras, they are completely wireless.

The cameras wirelessly communicate with the vuezone gateway. The gateway is designed to be connected to an internet router by ethernet cable and is not able to wirelessly connect. The problem is that the wifi hotspots usually do not have an ethernet port. That is where the wireless bridge comes in, you plug the gateway into that and the bridge wirelessly connects to the wireless hotspot, which connects wirelessly to cellular networks and internet access.

The cameras can be set to record a clip when motion is detected and send emails out to several addresses to alert you.

I've only had my system up and running for a couple hours at my personal residence to test it out, and I don't have the hotspot yet, so I am running it through my wireless router from the wireless bridge, but everything is working well so far.

The initial investment is about $335. Then there will be monthly costs of about $15 for the vuezone service and the wireless hotspot service. Vuezone has plans to have a lifetime membership of some kind available in the future, but when and how much is not known yet. These costs seem similar to many other security systems, but what I like is that I will be able to check in on my property without going there, just to make sure the furnace and ac are still there and the doors are not kicked in or windows broken. I will not have to investigate false alarms which will be good for me because some of my properties are a couple hours away and I will be able to travel as well.

There are drawbacks to the vuezone system, check out the reviews on amazon, though some of the issues have been fixed if you look at the new information from the vuezone website. I will try to update here what I find out as I continue to uses this system.

I have not, and don't think I would, reduced rent for any tenant, but I will work with them by changing when rent is due during the month, accepting bi-weekly payments, payment plans on past due rents, etc. All of these depend on the tenant of course. I am small-time still, just 3 units and only 1 year of landlording so far. Let me know if that matches up with what you are looking for.

1. Forums
2. BP Blog

I spend hours on the forums. I just check out the BP Blog to see if the new article for the day is of interest to me and read through that. When I first found BP I spent a few weeks reading my way through all of the posts on the BP blog since the very first one, there is a lot of good information there.

I am considering getting $10 or $25 gift cards to Target or Walmart for my tenants. Also, I discovered today that there is a $25 limit on gifts to tenants for tax deduction purposes based on the Every Landlord's Tax Deduction Guide book.