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TAX DAY 10 Tax Tips That Could Save You Money on Your Taxes
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Wednesday Real Estate Snapshot 🦅 🌎 ⚓️
Tax Day Kickoff
Happy Tax Day. April 15th is the best day of the year for Uncle Sam. Today we're talking about 10 different things you can do to help save on taxes.
Now understand. Now, just secondly, this stuff is general. Your tax advisor should give you a tax plan that not just saves you for this year, but for the next couple 10 years and different schemes of how the IRS is set up so you can save or maximize your money without having to give it to Uncle Sam.
That's the advice I would give you is go talk to a tax advisor or a CPA or a team that can help you do that. And if you need somebody like that, let me know. I have a quite a few people that can help you out with that.
Okay. Let's get into it. My advice was start a business. Well, what kind of business? I don't know. When you take your kids to school, start a kid, taxi, taking your kids to and from school, and then you can bring in some friends and that's, you have a business there.
You can start cookies. You can do, I don't know, an online business. You can do real estate. I don't know. Whatever you want to do. There's a thousand different ways, 10 million different things you can do to start a business. As long as you have a business, then you can have more deductions. I'm lucky because wherever I go, I have business meetings.
And then I also look at real estate because I'm in real estate. So everything I do, I can write off because that's how the IRS code is set up and I'm very conve conservative. I don't do things that are. Unethical, but you do have options and stuff that you can do for write-offs.
Estate and Charity Moves
Review your gift and estate plans.
Go talk to your CPA, your financial advisor and make sure you have these plans set up so that you can maximize your tax returns, your tax refunds. Consider your charitable giving. If you start a business and it becomes successful, then you should also have a charitable trust.
Again, not advice. Talk to your tax person about it and why the pluses and minuses, and if this is the right thing to do. Almost every millionaire multi-millionaire has charitable trust because you can actually write off a lot of stuff that way. It just works out that way. They're designed for that. How many 70,000 pages and 2000 of 'em are the laws and the rest of 'em are telling you how you can take advantage of the, these certain write-offs.
Offset Gains and Retirement
Consider offsetting investment gains with losses you've experienced. I bought a house for my parents, and that's a loss for me every month.
I did that on purpose. It's not actually a loss to me because I get the deductions, I get all the benefits from it, right? I get to write off all that because, well, it's a business, but also I get to do all these other things, but I also get to see it as a loss too.
Max out on your retirement plan. Yes, of course. Do that give your kids leg up on their own retirement? Yes. And if they go over that income, I told 'em that money should be sucked into your retirement account so it lowers your income. And then I can match that from my business.
So there's a lot of different ways of making sure that that happens.
Roth and Tax Smart Investing
Consider converting your traditional IRA to a Roth ira. Mine is in a 401k because I can use it to buy businesses and buy assets with it. So there's a lot of different things you need to be aware of what you're doing.
Look for tax aware investing strategies. if you are, an investor. An accredited investor and you're looking for different strategies, you might take a lower return if you can take write-offs on that. So for example, RV parks are very hot right now and mostly because you can take write-offs, you can deduct the a lot of different things from that.
And still get a small return. So if you need losses, that's where you want to do stuff like that. And then, yeah, there's also, another podcast that I do called Financial Intelligence, and I do that with my financial advisor. You can take a look at it on. On YouTube and get an idea of what we're talking about.
There's a ton of different investing strategies that are out there, and I'm not gonna tell you which one it is because I'm not a financial advisor. So go take that into account, right? As a matter of fact, this next one thing is it's still worth buying. Or is it becoming the biggest money trap for real estate?
And I can tell you right now, it's probably not a great cha opportunity for you to buy right now because housing is not affordable, right? So as Warren Buffet would say, I'm buying where it makes sense. I'm selling where it makes sense. And right now buying where It does make sense. Is investing in real estate investment trust, a reit, REIT, or if you're an accredited investor, there's other options for you as well.
Mostly because it doesn't help us in case my kids decide not to go to college, they're all going to college right now. That was just an option that we had. And no matter what, you still have to pay taxes when you pull that money out. So, decided not to do that and decided to take a different option to that.
And if you wanna learn what my options were, I'm happy to share that with you. Just have to tell me or ask me cover healthcare cost efficiently. All right. HSAs allow you to. Take your money, put it into there, and then you can pay your deductions there through that. So again, this is not my advice. This is from Merrill Lynch, who's also not a tax advisor.
But talk to your tax person. You should have three people helping you out with your finances, your tax, your financial advisor, your banker. You should have all these people working together teaching you how to go into different options and figure out what the best strategy is for you at your income level and your wealth level.
All right.
Real Estate Worth It
Is real estate still worth buying or is it becoming the biggest money trap of this gener? I'm saying into all, like I just did last week I did a, talk about the VA loan for veterans to students at San Jose State for veterans who've come home after their active duty stint, and now they're getting their.
Their GI bill and they're getting their degree, and we talk about what you can do now that you're going to become a civilian and a producing part of the, the community instead of part of the military. And buying a house is a good option anytime. But if you're buying it as an investment, it's something you have to be very, aware of.
You have to be in a position to understand that if the market goes down, if the economy goes bad, if anything happens, you have to sit there and take the lumps until the economy recovers, right? It's like buying stocks. You don't sell your stocks when you're at a massive loss unless you need a loss.
So there, it's like real estate right now is coming into the point where affordability is, is at an all time high. It's so expensive for people to buy in most places that if they did buy, it would be a struggle for them to buy. And renting might be a better option. So right now, while the economy's great and yesterday we talked about is there a recession coming, I think we're already in a recession.
But I can tell you that in recessions, all the way up until 2008, every time there was a recession or a depression or what have you, home values went up. So just keep that mind. If you're starting out and you don't have a way to buy a house without making it affordable, I would say rent or move to a place where you can afford it.
What I'm doing right now is if you have friends that you can trust, or family that you can trust, is that you buy a house and you rent it to your friend and your friend buys a house and they rent it to you. And now you're both landlords. And now you get to take major advantage of your house that you own because you get to take all the deductions, you get to take all the write offs.
'cause now it's a business. Now you're a landlord. So is it still worth buying? Depends on what you wanna do. I think Airbnb, and I've told you this five years ago, I think Airbnb is a big mistake right now unless you're buying in an area that needs occupancy, needs empty rooms, right? Is it going to make you a ton of money?
You have to do that research on your own. if you buy only, only buy. If you can afford a property comfortably and have plenty of money left over for maintenance, that will come along. Absolutely. Over the years, I've spent five to $15,000 on my house almost every year knowing that, but I'm doing it because I want it for my.
My cost of li my Comfortableness. I did the floors. I did the windows. I put in air conditioning. I did the kitchen twice 'cause it's lots of reasons. Did the bathrooms, I did it for me. I did it. I didn't do it to flip the house. I did it 'cause I wanted to live in a comfortable house. A nice house.
Maintenance and Money Habits
Maintenance and upgrades. And learn to do some simple maintenance. Absolutely. Buy tools, figure it out. YouTube's a great teacher. If you can't afford it or you just can't do it, call people. 'cause there's handymen out there and I have tons of handymen that'll do work for you.
As an aside, water heaters are easy to replace. Water heaters are stupid expensive. Right now, you're looking at 600 to a thousand dollars to just to buy it. If you have a, plumber do it for you, you're doubling that because that's how they charge you. You're at 1200 to $2,000 to replace a water heater.
If you can find one on sale, I would say buy it and keep it in storage. 'cause that's how it is most of the time. Water heater itself doesn't need to be replaced. Just the heating elements, Mention that this is rate, don't forget to mention still saving 15% of your income so you don't have to work at 90 whatever, regardless of what loan I have qualified for.
That's true. Guys. my friend's kid became a police officer and we were having dinner with him, and I said, the first thing you need to do is go buy a house, and if you can't afford a house, buy a townhouse. If you can't afford a townhouse, buy a condo. Get into a house right now because in 30 years you're going to be buying and selling.
Buying a house every one to two years, and then turning that house that you lived in into a rental. It just works out that way. And then you get your police retirement. On top of that, you own 10, 10, 20 houses, and then you can rent them to people that you know that you work with or what have you. And yes, you live below your means.
I'd say the rule of thumb is more important than ever. Keep your budget tight and look sometimes if you're getting into the market and you realize renting's smarter for you right now, yeah, absolutely. But you need to talk to a tax advisor. You need to talk to your financial advisor. You need to talk to everybody that's involved in your, your state, your wellbeing for the next 20, 30 years as you become.
Be comfortable. Don't live. Put away now and then go on vacations later. So that you can give your house your kids if your parents, my, my uncle just passed away at 93 a couple weeks ago, and I'm going up to Canada to do his memorial. And as sad as that is he was, he came from Austria as well as my mom from war torn Europe.
And made a life for himself and he was a plumber and he had a very hard life. He worked his ass off. He did everything he could and his son. And they put his son to, you know, private schools, parochial schools, had an education. And you know, I always laugh that my cousin, who's six weeks older than me, he had the brains and I had the face, right.
my cousin very smart. He had an economy degree at 22 and he's very entrepreneurial and he is very set for his life and now he's helping his parents move on and his parents, his dad just PA passed away. And the one thing I wanted to tell him was he was a good man and he raised a good.
He showed you the way he taught you how to do things even though you didn't want to. He, my cousin knows how to build a house, and that's what he's doing right now because of his debt. I didn't really have that. I learned that from being in the trades and learning at the hard way. But once your parents start passing on, you have to have a plan, right?
You have to have a big, huge, and it is, it's, you have to run your life like a business. So when it's time to pass it on and get your family to take on the house, and you move into an older structured house, make sure you declutter.
Get rid of the stuff that you know that your kids won't want. So I'm telling you that because I know a lot of people that are getting into that situation right now, and it's my time of life where I'm dealing with that daily, almost. Okay.
Marketing Stats and Listings
When we market your house, you get the listing analytics, right?
And this is my house that I'm selling 22,000 views, 400 display view. This is retargeting, and this is the click through and then top of the search results within homes.com. And then Matterport, And then nine floor plans. And this breaks it down everywhere and how many different platforms it showed the add-on, which is awesome. And then this right here, which is the heat map of where, the buyers are coming from. And it's nice to see, I think it's really smart. So if you wanna learn more, gimme a call.
Bank Owned Deals and HOA Rants
And then this is bank owned property of the week. Capella, it's still not on market. $1.6 million. I think this one's gonna be tough to sell because it's at a premium price and it's in okay condition, but it's also really close to 87, the freeway.
And if you look it's. Not exactly backing up, but you can still hear freeway sound from it. And it's also, right in the corridor of Communication Hill, so you're gonna get planes flying through there, that area as well. This is a nice house. There's nothing wrong with this house at all. Let's take a look at it inside.
It's pretty okay. I mean, it looks like it's been updated, but back in the early two thousands, late nineties. White appliances, Pergo flooring that kind of thing in a backyard. So if I bought this, it wouldn't be for 1.6. Just my thoughts. And then nothing crazy's going on here. We did get a couple more new bank owned properties to look at.
It is like these ones came back on market. It's like they were off market and they came back on market, but these are all condos. This is a house, three bedroom, one bath, and it's a hundred years old. In Santa Rosa. I think that one's a great buy. I bet you can get that one for like three or $4 million. And then you have one in East Palo Alto and one here in Redwood Shores, which is a condo. Seems like condos. Funny.
I think that's something that we need to do because if you look at these HOAs. One bedroom, one bath. Let's take a quick look inside there. See how much it costs. $500,000 seems cheap, but then let's take a look at the HOA $660 a month. $660 a month for a pool. That's ridiculous. That's why we need regulation.
Okay. Inventory's going up a little bit. There's nothing really crazy to talk about. You know, bank owns are pretty nominal and I don't think it's much to worry about. All right.
Wrap Up and Goodbye
That's it for now. Thanks for watching. We'll see you out there.
🔴 Insurance Adjuster What You Should Know https://youtu.be/8IWgof1qvnc Please like and share! 🔴 Renters losing MORE than Rent! (Bay Area Median Home Prices) https://youtu.be/VwLrwX2YuHo?t=41 🔴 MoonBeans Coffee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmHpGXVu5sQ&feature=youtu.be Videos edited by Vydeoease.com Use Exemption code VEASY Vito Scarnecchia Real Estate Broker, Veteran, Dad DRE#: 01407676 408-479-2427 FREE DESKTOP APPRAISAL https://www.propertyrate.com/agent/vitoscarnecchia If you are moving ANYWHERE in the world - Let me know! I know a LOT of AMAZING Agents! 🔴 Willow Glen's five most expensive homes https://youtu.be/3A_E2ck0ePg
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