Hi, I have a question. I have a short term rental that I rented for 155 days (5 months straight). When I look at the expenses I have a few questions. I entered the total for real estate taxes, insurance premiums, and mortgage interest and those get prorated for 155/365, which makes sense as those expenses are equally distributed throughout the year. However cleaning/maintenance and utilities were not evenly distributed throughout the year and were much higher while the unit was rented. Here's an example:
Utilities for the year were $3789. Prorated at 155/365 that is a $1610 expense.
However, the utilities while rented (5 months straight) were an exact expense of $1926.
This tells me there is a $316 disadvantage using the prorating method.
Is there a different way to handle this? Can I pad the calculations to get the exact value, as I know what it is.
