Just got a response after you left your question! However we ended up filing our taxes through an accountant because I was too unsure on how to do them myself with this rental property. After looking over their work, it's very simple. Expenses from 2019 will not go on 2019's tax return except for property tax and mortgage interest. The property acts as your 2nd home for 2019 as it was not ready to be rented. Since we don't itemize, we didn't actually include the taxes or interest for this property, but you can if it's the best option for you. The accountant added up all of our improvement expenses for the home in 2019 and added them to the value of our property to come up with the deprecation. Closing costs for the property go towards amortization. They simply just calculated the depreciation and amortization for next years purposes so that we could get an idea of our future deductions. You would not actually need to compute these until next years filing. If you have additional expenses in 2020 for improving the property prior to renting it, they will be included with 2019's improvement expenses and increase your overall depreciated amount. Once ready to rent the property, expenses can then be deducted as regular annual repair expenses. Hope that helps!
