Mobile Home Investment in FL

[ntjames46]

I bought a mobile home in a park, repaired it and now I am doing rent-to-own with a tenant buyer.  How do I record everything on my taxes? Is this scenario to complicated for Turbo tax to guide me or should I get a small business accountant?

[Carl]

Get an accountant to deal with the tax aspects of this for you. TurboTax can handle it just fine. But if you don't know what you're doing, you *will* do it wrong. Some other things too:

 - Keep *every* *single* *scrape* of paperwork. Based on my own personal experience from others, I can tell you that chances of you foreclosing on a rent to own agreement in the first 2 years is more than 90%. Chances of it falling through in the first 5 years is 100%. Either way, when it falls through (and it will) that's a completely new tax nightmare.  It's made worse since it's mobile homes you're dealing with and it's a well known fact that mobile homes lose value over time.

In FL it's darn near impossible to insure a mobile home over 10 years old, and if you can get it insured you'll pay through the nose for it.

Overall you're better off either renting the properties out, or just outright selling them to clear the old stuff off the property and then replace it with newer modular homes.

[LeonardS]

TurboTax will guide you through filing your tax return with a rental property.  In TurboTax you will  asked about your rental income and expenses.  TurboTax will  automatically transfer the information to Schedule E.

TurboTax will also allow you to enter your "rent to own" information with the tenant buyer and prepare the necessary tax forms.

You should be aware that  "rent to Own" has legal aspects that are beyond just properly filing your tax returns.