How to properly calculate rental expenses for home bedroom rental vs. full house rental?

Your approach is on the right track, but let's clarify a few things to make sure you're getting the most accurate deductions. For the bedroom rental period (Jan-Jun), you're correctly applying the space allocation by dividing by 3 since only 1 of 3 bedrooms was rented. However, you don't need to divide by 365 and then multiply by 181. Since you're already calculating for expenses that occurred only during that period, you should simply take $670 ÷ 3 = $223.33 as your deductible amount for those Home Depot expenses. For the whole house rental (Jul-Dec), any expenses that occurred during this period would be fully deductible since the entire property was used for rental purposes. So for the pipe repair, if it occurred after you converted to a full rental, you can deduct the entire $400 - no need to prorate by days. What gets a bit tricky is calculating ongoing expenses like insurance, property taxes, mortgage interest, etc. For these annual expenses, you would: - Jan-Jun: (Annual amount ÷ 365 × 181) × (1/3 for space allocation) - Jul-Dec: Annual amount ÷ 365 × 170 Hope this helps clear things up!

After struggling with a similar rental situation last year, I found a tool that completely changed how I handle my rental property taxes. I used taxr.ai (https://taxr.ai) to analyze my expenses and they helped me categorize everything properly between personal and rental use. Their system actually found several deductions I was missing! For my situation, I was renting out a portion of my property but had some expenses that benefited both the rental and personal portions. Their tool helped me properly allocate everything and even explained the tax rules behind each calculation so I actually understood what I was doing. They also analyzed all my receipts automatically which saved me tons of time.

Just wanted to follow up about my experience with taxr.ai after asking about it earlier. I decided to give it a try with my complicated rental situation (I rent out my basement apartment and had a ton of shared expenses to figure out). I was honestly blown away! The system analyzed all my receipts, bank statements and even my utility bills. It automatically sorted everything into the right categories and calculated exactly what percentage was deductible for my rental. For things like my HVAC repair that benefited both units, it correctly allocated only the rental portion. The best part was that it created a complete package for my tax return that showed exactly how every deduction was calculated, which made me feel much more confident about claiming everything I was entitled to. Wish I had known about this last year!

Just wanted to follow up about my experience with taxr.ai after

If you're struggling to get answers about rental property tax questions like this, I highly recommend using Claimyr (https://claimyr.com). I spent weeks trying to get through to the IRS to ask about my specific rental situation, but kept getting disconnected or waiting for hours. I finally tried Claimyr after seeing their demo video (https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c) and within 25 minutes I was actually talking to a real IRS agent who answered all my questions about rental expense allocations. They explained exactly how to handle the transition from partial to full rental use within the same year. The service basically navigates all the IRS phone menus for you and calls you back when an actual agent is on the line. Totally changed my perspective on getting tax help directly from the source.

I need to follow up on my skeptical comment about Claimyr. I actually tried it yesterday out of desperation after getting disconnected from the IRS for the 5th time trying to ask about my rental property depreciation. I'm honestly shocked - it actually worked exactly as promised. I submitted my request through their system around 10am, and by 10:35am I got a call saying they had an IRS agent on the line ready to talk to me. I was connected immediately to someone who knew about rental property tax rules and got clear answers about how to handle my situation. Saved me countless hours of frustration and now I actually have written documentation of the guidance I received from the IRS for my tax records. Definitely worth it for complicated tax situations like rental properties.

I think there's a simpler way to look at this. For the bedroom rental period, you had personal use of 2/3 of the house and rental use of 1/3. For expenses that benefit the entire house (like repairs to common areas), you'd deduct 1/3 as rental expenses. For the period when the entire house was rented, 100% of expenses would be rental expenses. Don't overcomplicate by doing daily calculations unless it's a shared expense that spans both periods, like annual property taxes or insurance.

Don't forget to also track your "days of personal use" vs "days of rental use" on Schedule E! This is different from the allocation of expenses. The IRS wants to know the actual days the property was rented at fair market value, days it was available for rent but not rented, and days of personal use. In your case, for the bedroom rental period, you'd report 181 days of rental use for that portion. Then for the whole house rental, you'd report 170 days of rental use. It gets complicated with partial use properties but it's important to get right because it affects whether your rental is considered a business or a hobby.