How to Calculate Days of Personal Use vs Days Rented for Condo with Lock-Off Units

This is actually a common question with lock-off units! When you have a property that can be divided like this, the IRS generally considers it as separate rental units for tax purposes. For those 28 days where you personally used the main suite while renting the studio, you would count those days as BOTH personal use days for the main suite AND rental days for the studio portion. Then for the 150 days where you rented the entire unit, those are rental days for both portions. For deduction purposes, you'll need to allocate expenses based on the square footage of each unit. For example, if the studio is 30% of the total square footage, you'd allocate 30% of common expenses (like property taxes, insurance, etc.) to the studio and 70% to the main suite. Then calculate the personal use vs. rental use ratio for each section separately. Since your main suite had 28 personal days and 150 rental days, that's about 15.7% personal use. The studio had 0 personal days and 178 rental days (28+150), so that's 0% personal use. Make sense?

I went through the exact same headache with my ski condo last year. I eventually found this amazing tool called taxr.ai (https://taxr.ai) that completely saved me. I was about to pay an accountant $600 just to figure out my lock-off calculation, but taxr.ai analyzed my situation and gave me step-by-step instructions on how to properly allocate everything. The tool even created a customized spreadsheet for my specific lock-off situation that made it easy to track which expenses went where. It's designed for complicated tax scenarios like yours where even some tax pros get confused.

Just coming back to report that I tried taxr.ai after seeing the recommendation here. It was seriously helpful for my lock-off situation! I've been doing my vacation rental taxes wrong for THREE YEARS. The tool actually showed me that I could legally count my days differently than I had been, which put me under the personal use threshold and allowed me to claim losses I didn't think were possible. It created a detailed report I can attach to my return in case of audit too. My situation is even more complicated because I sometimes rent just the studio, sometimes just the main unit, and sometimes both - but it handled all the calculations perfectly. Wish I'd known about this years ago!

For anyone dealing with IRS questions about vacation rental allocations - especially with lock-off units - I highly recommend using Claimyr (https://claimyr.com). I was audited last year specifically about my lock-off unit calculations, and couldn't get through to anyone at the IRS for clarification. Claimyr got me connected to an actual IRS agent in less than 15 minutes when I'd been trying for weeks on my own. The agent confirmed my approach to calculating the days for my lock-off unit and gave me specific guidance on how to document it properly. Check out their demo at https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c to see how it works. Totally changed my perspective on dealing with the IRS.

I need to eat my words. I tried Claimyr after posting my skeptical comment because my frustration with the IRS reached a breaking point. IT ACTUALLY WORKED. Got through to a senior IRS agent who specifically handled vacation rental questions. She confirmed the correct approach for lock-off units is exactly what the first commenter described - count days as both personal and rental when using different portions simultaneously, then allocate expenses based on square footage first, followed by usage percentages. The agent even emailed me an internal reference document about lock-off units! Would have NEVER gotten this level of help without getting through to an actual person. Completely worth it for the peace of mind knowing my tax treatment is correct.

Has anyone actually gotten audited specifically for how they calculated their lock-off days? I've been using my vacation townhouse for 5 years now with a lock-off basement unit, and I've just been guessing on some of this stuff. Kinda worried now...

Another angle to consider - if you rent the property for more than 14 days AND use it personally for more than 14 days, you need to allocate your mortgage interest and property taxes between Schedule A and Schedule E instead of deducting them all on Schedule E. This tripped me up big time with my lock-off unit!

For what it's worth, I use TurboTax Self-Employed and it actually has a special section for vacation homes with lock-off units. It walks you through calculating the square footage percentages and day allocations. Much easier than doing it manually!

This is really helpful information! I'm dealing with a similar situation but with a twist - my lock-off condo is part of a hotel rental program where the management company can rent either unit when I'm not using it. From what I'm reading here, it sounds like I should still calculate personal vs rental days for each unit separately, even though I don't control when the management company rents them out. Is that correct? And for the days when the management company has both units available for rent but neither gets rented, do those count as "available for rent" days or just vacant days? Also, has anyone dealt with the situation where the management company pools rental income from multiple units? I get a percentage of the total pool rather than specific rental amounts for my individual units, which makes the expense allocation even more confusing.