Your Tax Questions Answered
Home Buyer Credit: We Rented for a Bit
Kiplinger editorial director Kevin McCormally and fellow tax experts Peter Blank and Mary Beth Franklin tackle your most pressing tax challenges
By Kevin McCormally, Editorial Director, Kiplinger.com
December 8, 2009
QUESTION:
We have a question on whether we would qualify for the home buyer credit. We owned our previous home for almost six years and sold the house in June so that we could build a new house. We have been renting since July and are expected to close on our new house Dec. 15th. Would we still qualify since we had to rent for a few months for our house to be completed?
KEVIN ANSWERS:
Sure, it sounds like you’re okay for the $6,500 long-time resident credit. The temporary rental doesn’t cause a problem because the law simply requires that you own a home for five of the eight years leading up to the purchase date of your new home. Sounds like you qualify.
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Reader Comments (5)
Posted by: clark at 12/29/2009 11:38:11 AM
Back in June we decided to remodel an older home that we had owned for some time and sell our homestead. We had to do some work on the home we were living in to get it ready to sell and spent a good amount on the older home to make it liveable. Is any of the remodeling on the homestead or the renovations on the older home tax deductible? We also purchased a new low energy hot water heater and a emergency stand by generator. Would these qualify?
Posted by: Jason at 12/30/2009 03:18:24 PM
My wife and I closed on a house 12/30/08, however, we didn't take possession of the house unitl 1/6/09, after the previous owners moved out. Since we weren't living at the new house and it wasn't our primary residence unitl 2009, I believe we would qualify for the 2009 home-buyer tax credit. Is this correct?
Posted by: jessica at 01/23/2010 12:06:38 AM
My husband is in the Coast Guard and we were transferred from SC to VA. My question is we had to rent out our home for less than the morgage amount. We now also have to rent a home in VA. Is there a deduction for our situation since we aren't making any profit? When I messed with numbers on turbo tax and put in our tenent's "income" it put us into a new tax bracket, it dropped our refund a great deal. Are there any loopholes to help us get back into the lower bracket?
Posted by: robert at 01/26/2010 02:48:22 PM
are there any tax breaks for someone who has to rent?
Posted by: Guy Tunnell at 02/24/2010 04:48:58 PM
We've owned three different homes in the last 14 years; one from 1996-2004, another from 2004-2007, and the most recent, from May 2009-present. Do we qualify under any of the terms of either the Bush-era or Obama-era new home buyers tax credit? TX!