You can most certainly do it that way if you want. Maybe it makes the math easier for you? Now while $255,000 may be your purchase price, is that your cost basis? Remember, cost basis includes your purchase price when you originally acquired the property, plus the cost of any improvements you paid for during the time you owned it. Does that purchase price also include the cost of any and all property improvements you paid for since you purchased it? If not, then your cost basis would actually be higher. If it does include the cost of property improvements, then your math is fine.
But generally, since you sold at a gain, so long as the sale price of each asset is "at least" $1 over it's cost basis, you'll be fine; as that will allow for the program to correctly recapture depreciation taken on all assets. Example:
Back in 2015 you purchased a new central air system at a cost of $10,000. Since that becomes "a material part of" the property, it gets classified as residential rental real estate and depreciated over 27.5 years. On the closing date of the sale you had taken approximately $2000 of depreciation on that asset. The adjusted cost basis would then be $8,000. If you report a sale price of $$9,000 "on paper", then there would only be $1000 of depreciation recaptured, and the other $1000 would be a loss on that one asset. That's wrong since you sold the property at a gain.
Whereas if you report a sales price of $10,001, you'd have the full $2000 of depreciation already taken recaptured and taxed correctly with an additional $1 gain on the sale of that specific asset.
Correct depreciation recapture really comes into play in a much more important way if your AGI will put you above the 24% tax bracket. Sometimes the sale of real estate will do exactly that. Since the maximum tax rate on recaptured depreciation is 25%, if your AGI bumps you from the 24% bracket into the 32% tax bracket, having that recaptured depreciation capped at 25% can really make a difference that you'll notice.
