I spoke with a TurboTax agent who is the one who recommended this approach, so I think maybe the above commenters misunderstand my situation. To reiterate: this is our primary home that we're only renting out temporarily (as I mentioned above). We plan to move back into this residence in the next year or two. It isn't "rental property" - it's our primary (only) residence that we're temporarily renting out to save funds during the economic crisis. You are saying that because I've rented it out for any period of time, I am now required to take a few years of deprecated value rather than the full value of the expense when I sell? If this is true, since I will only be renting the property (and receiving income from it) for a few years, I would only be able to receive a very small portion of the value of the expense.
If for some reason our circumstances change and we decide to turn this into a permanent rental, I'll go ahead and start deprecating the property as an asset at that point. But I don't think that I am "required" to turn my primary residence into a deprecated asset for just a year or two of rental. I trust the advice I received from the TurboTax professional who spent 45 minutes on the phone with me today - but I'm now very confused. Please let me know if I was given incorrect information from TurboTax, or if I'm somehow misunderstanding your comments. Thank you!
