Real estate investor has trouble shaking depreciation recapture tax

Real estate investor has trouble shaking depreciation recapture tax

DEAR BOB: If I move for 24 months into a rental house I’ve owned for 15 years, can I then sell it as my principal residence to avoid the recapture tax on all the depreciation I’ve deducted? –Elinor W.

DEAR ELINOR: Sorry. The only way to avoid the dreaded federal depreciation 25 percent recapture tax is to make a tax-deferred exchange for a qualifying replacement investment or business property of equal or greater cost and equity.

Converting a rental house into your principal residence will avoid capital gain tax on up to $250,000 (up to $500,000 for a qualified married couple filing a joint tax return). However, the portion of your capital gain that is attributed to the depreciation you deducted during your ownership years remains taxable at the special 25 percent federal recapture tax rate when you sell the property. For full details, please consult your tax adviser.

Affordable housing offers developer rich pursuit

Affordable housing offers developer rich pursuit

But spiraling land prices are squeezing such projects out of Central Florida

In 1988, Alan Ginsburg decided to use the federal government’s new tax credits for low-income housing to accomplish two things: provide affordable rental housing for people, and build a thriving business for himself.

He has done both, riding the popularity of such tax-subsidized development to create one of the nation’s largest apartment companies, based in Maitland.

55 West ready to rise [Orlando]

55 West ready to rise [Orlando]

Three years after it was first proposed, construction of the 55 West condominium tower in downtown Orlando is under way and headed for completion in spring 2008.

Spiraling costs for material and labor had delayed the 32-story project, and a long list of prospective buyers evaporated as delays continued and prices rose.

But now the 405-unit tower is 74 percent sold, with buyers signing “hard sales contracts,” said Craig Ustler, president of CondoHQ Orlando LLC, the brokerage handling the sales.

Equity cushions flat for newest buyers

Equity cushions flat for newest buyers

Billowing appreciation rates have been the hot news in home real estate for much of the past three years. But now, with many of the most effervescent local markets in a cool-down phase, the focus is turning to something much more fundamental: homeowners’ equity stakes.

How big is your home equity cushion? How much more is your home worth compared with the debts you’ve loaded on it – primarily your first and second mortgages and credit lines? Do you have a 20 percent equity stake? Less than 10 percent?

Developers throw in extras to seal condo deals

Developers throw in extras to seal condo deals

With a wave of new condominium units now available in Greater Boston, real estate developers are offering incentives to boost sales and move hard-to-market units.

Developers are often willing to pay closing costs, forgive monthly maintenance fees for a year, or throw in amenities such as free hardwood floors. These incentives are rarely advertised, but buyers, sensing that the leverage in negotiations is shifting in their favor, are bargaining harder for extras.

Buyers angered as develo Florida Sun-Sentper misses 3 deadlines at idle condo site in Boca

Buyers angered as developer misses 3 deadlines at idle condo site in Boca

Jackie Badome has four bedrooms, three bathrooms and two grown children. She doesn’t need a big house anymore.

So in 2004 Badome agreed to pay $360,000 for a two-bedroom condominium at Eden, a former apartment complex on Palmetto Park Road and Southwest Fourth Avenue in Boca Raton. She put down 10 percent in cash for the condo that was supposed to be ready in March 2005.

But the developer, West Palm Beach-based Ceebraid-Signal Corp., didn’t deliver, blaming a busy hurricane season for the delay. Ceebraid missed at least two more deadlines and now promises Badome can move in by September — except that construction on the job site stopped months ago.