How do I calculate Days of Personal Use vs Days Rented to Others (Fair Rental Days) on my multifamily property?

You're mixing up two different tax concepts. For a multi-unit property like yours, you don't calculate personal use days vs. rental days the way you would for a vacation home. Instead, you allocate expenses based on the percentage of the property used for personal vs. rental purposes. Since you have a 4-unit building and live in 1 unit, you would generally allocate 25% of certain expenses (like mortgage interest, property taxes, insurance, and maintenance of common areas) as personal and 75% as rental expenses on Schedule E. The rental portion is deductible against your rental income. Regarding your roommate situation - that gets a bit more complex. When you rent out part of your personal residence unit, you'll need to allocate expenses within that unit. If your roommate used 50% of your unit for 6 months, you'd calculate: 50% of 1 unit for 6 months = 50% × 25% × 50% = 6.25% additional rental use for that period.

This whole percentage vs. days thing confused me too when I first started with rental properties. I found this awesome tool at https://taxr.ai that really helped me figure out my exact situation. I had a duplex where I was living in the upstairs and renting out the downstairs, plus I converted my garage into an ADU halfway through the year. The tool analyzed my whole scenario and showed me exactly how to allocate everything, plus it warned me about some common audit triggers with mixed-use properties. It even helped me understand how to handle the utilities since I had a weird setup where some were shared and others weren't.

Just wanted to update - I tried that taxr.ai site after seeing it mentioned here. It was actually really helpful for my situation! I've been stressing about how to handle my mixed-use property correctly, and the tool broke everything down perfectly. It showed me exactly how to allocate my expenses between personal and rental use, and even identified some deductions I was missing. The depreciation calculator was particularly useful since I was doing that all wrong. I'm going to save about $2,300 on my taxes this year compared to what I was planning to file. Definitely recommend it if you're confused about the whole personal use vs. rental use thing with a multi-unit property.

Has anyone here tried calling the IRS directly about multi-family property allocation questions? I've been trying for WEEKS to get someone on the phone who actually understands rental property tax rules. Always on hold for hours only to get disconnected or get someone who gives vague answers. Super frustrating. I finally used https://claimyr.com and they got me connected to an IRS agent in about 20 minutes. You can see how it works in this video: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c. After weeks of trying, I finally got real answers about how to handle my triplex where I rent out two units and use one for my home office.

Ok so I need to eat my words from my earlier comment. After another failed attempt at reaching the IRS yesterday (2+ hours on hold then disconnected), I broke down and tried that Claimyr service. It actually worked! Got a call back in about 35 minutes and spoke to an IRS agent who helped clarify exactly how I should handle the allocation for my multi-unit property. Turns out I was doing it wrong for the past 2 years, but they said I don't need to amend since the difference was small. Anyway, just wanted to follow up since I was so skeptical before. Sometimes things that sound too good to be true actually work!

Something else to consider with your situation: if your roommate was renting just a room in your unit (not the whole unit), you'll also need to allocate the expenses within that unit based on either square footage or number of rooms. For example, if your unit has 1000 sq ft and your roommate used 300 sq ft exclusively plus shared spaces, you might allocate about 40% of your personal unit's expenses to rental use for the period they lived there.

Has anyone used TurboTax to handle this kind of situation? Their rental property section is confusing me with all these percentage allocations and I'm not sure if I'm entering it correctly.

One thing I'd add that hasn't been mentioned yet - make sure you're keeping detailed records of all your expenses and how you're allocating them. The IRS loves to audit mixed-use properties because the allocation rules can be complex and people often make mistakes. I'd recommend creating a simple spreadsheet showing: - Total property expenses by category - Your allocation percentages (75% rental, 25% personal for the base property, plus any adjustments for the roommate period) - The calculated amounts for each category Also, don't forget about depreciation on the rental portion of your property. That's often the biggest tax benefit for rental property owners, but it only applies to the business/rental use percentage of your property value (minus land value). For your roommate situation, I'd calculate it exactly like others mentioned - figure out what percentage of your unit they used, multiply that by your unit's percentage of the total property (25%), and apply that for the months they were there. Keep their rental payments and any receipts showing the space they occupied.