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Deductions & credits
This operates in a gray area of the tax law because of your Real Estate Professional (REP) status. You can potentially deduct all your 2025 rental expenses and depreciation against your other income as a REP but the IRS may think otherwise.
If the IRS decides the property wasn't "ready and available" until 2026, you are technically a "Real Estate Professional" with no rental activity yet. In that case, you can't claim a rental loss for 2025; instead, you just add those costs to the value of the house to be depreciated later.
This is something you may need to decide if this would pass an audit or not since it isn't clarified in the tax code. My suggestion is to wait until 2026 so there is no risk of an audit.
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March 13, 2026
6:41 AM