Assuming the renter was the last person to move out of the property prior to the sale, that would mean the property remained classified as residential real estate the entire time it was empty. Therefore you will not indicate converting it. There is one little trick you have to perform though, so you can properly report the sale in the rental section.
Work through the property "as if" it was rented in 2017. When asked for rental income, enter a zero.
When asked for number of days rented, enter a 1 (one day rented)
When asked for days of personal use, enter zero.
For rental expenses, if you paid utility bills from 1/1/2017 up until the time you sold it, you can claim those. They won't be "allowed" as rental expenses since you have no rental income from which to deduct them. But they will be "allowed" as a realized loss when you report the sale. The program will take care of that in the background for you.
Don't bother claiming repairs and maintenance expenses if incurred, since you were not preparing the property for rent. You will instead include those costs as sales expenses, since you were preparing the property for sale.
Note also that to qualify for the capital gains exclusion, you must have lived in the house for at least 730 days of the last 1826 days you owned it, counting back from the closing date of the sale.
Now with that, here's how to report the sale in TurboTax.
Reporting the Sale of
Rental Property
If you qualify for
the "lived in 2 of last 5 years" capital gains exclusion, then when
prompted you WILL indicate that this sale DOES INCLUDE the sale of your main
home. For AD MIL personnel who don't qualify because of PCS orders, select this
option anyway, because you "MIGHT" qualify for at last a partial
exclusion.
Start working through
Rental & Royalty Income (SCH E) "AS IF" you did not sell the
property. One of the screens near the start will ahve a selection on it for
"I sold or otherwise disposed of this property in 2017". Select
it. After you select the "I sold or otherwise disposed
of this property in 2017" you continue working it through "as
if" you still own it. When you come to the summary screen you will enter
all of your rental income and expenses, even it it's zero. Then you MUST work
through the "Sale of Assets/Depreciation" section. You must work through
each individual asset one at a time to report its disposition (in your case,
all your rental assets were sold).
Understand that if
more than the property itself is listed in your assets list, then you need to
allocate your sales price across all of your assets. You will only allocate the structure sales price;
you will NOT allocate the land sales price, since the land is not a depreciable
asset. Then if you sold this rental at a
gain, you must show a gain on all assets, even if that gain is $1. Likewise if
you sold at a loss then you must show a loss on all assets, even if that loss
is $1
Basically when
working through an asset you select the option for "I stopped using this
asset in 2017" and go from there. Note that you MUST do this for EACH AND
EVERY asset listed.
When you finish
working through everything listed in the assets section, if you ever at any
time you owned this rental you claimed vehicle expenses, then you must also
work through the vehicle section and show the disposition of the vehicle. Most
likely, your vehicle disposition will be "removed for personal use",
as I seriously doubt you sold your vehicle as a part of this rental sale.
