topic Personal Use of Rental Property: Why are some expenses not being deducted and some are? in Investors & landlords

Personal Use of Rental Property: Why are some expenses not being deducted and some are?

EC61 — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 11:13:50 GMT

We converted our property from personal use to rental late last year - 182 personal use days and 51 fair rental days. We received $2,965 in rent, but had to make some repairs of $5,396 after our tenants moved in, and our cleaning/maintenance expense for the whole year was $9,683 (HOA dues). When I put in the numbers, these two categories don't change any of the federal/state refund numbers and don't show up in Schedule E.

But when I put figures in the other categories, such as management fees and real estate taxes, they change the federal/state refund numbers and also show up in Schedule E (in the case of real estate taxes, they are pro-rated for fair rental days vs personal use days). Shouldn't the Cleaning/Maint show up as a prorated amount of the yearly amount in schedule E, and the Repairs show up also? Or are those categories not allowed to be added to the expenses for some reason?

As a test, I added the Cleaning/Maint and Repair amounts and added them to the management fees category, it seemed to change the tax refund numbers and show up in schedule E.

Re: Rental property "Cleaning/Maint" and "Repairs" don't appear to be deducted and don't appear o...

AnnetteB6 — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 17:01:58 GMT

Your ratio of rental days to personal use days is most likely causing this issue.

When you convert a property from personal use to rental, you do not count any of the days prior to the conversion day as a personal use day. Personal use days is only counted if you used the property personally after it was converted to a rental property.

Try adjusting your personal use days and that should fix the situation you are seeing. You will need to prorate certain expenses such as your property taxes and HOA dues to only report the portion of those expenses that you incurred after the property was converted to a rental.

Re: Rental property "Cleaning/Maint" and "Repairs" don't appear to be deducted and don't appear on Schedule E - Other categories such as "Management Fees" and "Real Estate Taxes" do

Carl — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 19:59:03 GMT

We converted our property from personal use to rental late last year - 182 personal use days

That's your issue. You have ZERO personal use days. Read the small print on that screen. It's asking for days of personal use *AFTER* you converted it to a rental. So you have ZERO days of personal use.