Homeowner Tax Deductions: Real Estate’s Ace in the Hole

Sure, even the idea of homeownership is appealing for all of the traditional emotional and lifestyle reasons. Having proprietary control over your family’s center of operations is a goal for most local residents—just as most of us would consider it a necessary evil if professional obligations make frequent moves unavoidable. Travel may be broadening, but most rolling stones (no matter how moss-less) eventually hanker to settle down.

But aside from the lifestyle aspects, another major advantage to settling down and owning your home gets its turn in the limelight at least once a year. This advantage is anything other than abstract. The time of year is April 15, when the concrete financial benefits are tallied up in the very welcome form of homeowner’s tax deductions.

Tax advice is not my specialty—for that, you should always defer to your qualified financial advisor, whose full time job it is to do all that’s humanly possible to keep track of the ever-changing Federal Tax Code. But even non-specialists know that some of the most beneficial provisions in the Code’s 75,000 pages do relate to the range of significant homeowner tax deductions.

In the National Association of Realtors’ periodical houselogic, writer Dona DeZube recently surveyed some of the major ones—tax tips that deserve to be investigated by any  homeowner who will soon be charting out their own mid-April strategies.

The list was headed by the most obvious one, the mortgage interest deduction, which applies to interest paid on a loan secured by the place you live in. That doesn’t have to be a house—it could also be a trailer or a boat. As long as you sleep and cook in it, if it also has toilet facilities, interest paid for its purchase falls into the category.

Likewise, there is the prepaid interest deduction. Prepaid interest (aka “points”) you pay in when you take out a mortgage or refi can usually be deducted in the year it is originated. An exception is when you refinance and use the proceeds for other than home improvements, in which case the deduction is spread out over the life of the loan. If you refinance again, it gets a little more complicated (may be time to ring up that qualified advisor again).

Another hefty deduction is the one for property taxes you have paid. If your mortgage lender required you to insure repayment through private mortgage insurance (PMI), if your income is less than a set amount, the premiums may be fully deductible (otherwise, a reduced deduction will apply). Even more complicated rules apply to government insurance premiums (qualified advisor time).

More homeowner tax deductions can be applicable, too, with varying degrees of complication—particularly those which relate to vacation homes. And there are also tax credits for things like energy-efficient home systems.

The bottom line - deductibility of many aspects of homeownership can be a major reason why April 15 causes many renters to do some serious examination of their residential futures. I’m here to help with any of your own real estate plans!    

Mystery of The 184 Things A Real Estate Agent Does For Clients 

As its name clearly implies, The 184 Things a Real Estate Agent Does for You is an exhaustive list of the actions a real estate agent is called upon to perform on behalf of a client. It is an authentic real estate Golden Oldie.
     Whenever someone wonders aloud what it is that real estate agents do to earn their commissions, many of us agents have the option of digging around in a drawer for a wrinkled printout of The 184 Things. If there were a Real Estate Hall of Fame, The 184 Things would be sure to have its own spot-lighted exhibit…or even an interactive video display (so the kids could push colored buttons that would seem to make the list interactive).
     Since the list is 184 items long, it’s a good bet that, given the option, very few of our clients would have read the whole thing (if they had, they’d probably be so exhausted they might  reconsider selling their house at all).
     Actually, the truth is real estate agents don’t perform all 184 in the course of any single home buying or selling transaction. Some items refer to specific kinds of deals; some others aren’t always necessary. But they’re all authentic, and for most transactions, we really do execute on a lot more than half of them. To give you the flavor, they are actions like “Verify legal description,” “Confirm lot size via owner’s copy of certified survey, if available,” “Prepare detailed list of property’s ‘inclusions & conveyances’…,” and so on.
     Like so many other epochal historical events, the birth of The 184 Things seems shrouded in mystery. You might think that the reason is because it happened so long ago—but 2006 isn’t really that long ago. Perhaps the mists of time haven’t actually had a chance to fully enshroud the event…so maybe simple confusion is responsible. Most historical citations credit its origin to a 2006 House of Representatives Financial Services Sub-Committee hearing, during which the president-elect of the NAR presented the Things at the conclusion of her testimony. This could have happened after some House member made the innocent mistake of asking what real estate agents do to earn their commissions…but the actual exchange that provoked the list has been lost for all time.

At any rate, despite the House hearing being often credited as the point of origin for The 184 Things, there are problems with that story. The House archives’ transcript of the hearing shows a written Attachment that has 180 Things—not 184! But that’s not the only mystery, because the Attachment has a footnote, which seems to credit the Orlando Regional Realtor Association. It’s only after you consult the ORRA’s web site that you come upon what may be the original list, with all 184. If they ever do build a Real Estate Hall of Fame, it could be a reason to put it in Florida…

I don't need to do each one of The 184 Things every time I set about helping a client buy or sell their home - but it's certain I do an awful lot of them. My own list is simply one with all of the things that need to be done - and turns out to be different for every client and every property. The first item is always the same, though-and it's all yours: call me!