A thread on how real estate investors, developers and operators can make millions a year and pay almost nothing in TAXES by using depreciation, bonus depreciation, and 1031 exchanges.
How it works:
Depreciation is the act of slowly, over time, deducting the initial expense of an asset against your taxable income. Generally over a 27.5 (residential) or 39 (commercial) yr time frame. So each year you can write off 2-3.6% of the purchase price against your income.
Thats a big deal. We're buying a new property, a $3MM self storage facility. Thats a $60k a year write off against about $260k in NOI and 200k in cashflow on a $3MM deal.
It makes 30% of our cashflow tax free.
Very powerful but there is much more to it...
Different parts of the asset can be depreciated on different schedules.
We'll have a cost segregation study done to split up the depreciable lifespan of different parts of the building. The raw land can't be depreciated so you have to give that a value.
But other items can be depreciated on a quicker timeline. A roof, road, sidewalk, fencing, walls, gates, doors, latches, flooring, air conditioners, pavers, curbing, landscaping, etc.
The IRS has a depreciation schedule for each type. Some parts are 5 yrs. Others 15 years...