#property-management
Trust accounting, reconciliation, and compliance for rental and HOA property managers
Advance rent is taxable the year you receive it; a refundable security deposit is not income until you keep it. The split, the state escrow and interest rules underneath it, and the journal entries that keep both straight.
Points on rental and business property are prepaid interest that must be amortized per scheduled payment, not per year — $4,800 on a 20-year loan is $20 a payment, so a 3-payment first year deducts $60. Refinancing with the same lender blocks the write-off of leftover points and rolls them into the new loan's term.
Scotland's 2026 revaluation pushed almost 4,000 small firms off 100% Small Business Bonus Scheme relief while thresholds stayed frozen at £12,000. Here are the 2026-27 SBBS bands, the three transitional caps (15% general, 25% net for lost SBBS, 15% self-catering), and the short-term-let licence rules that void relief entirely.
Since July 1, 2026, Airbnb and Vrbo must verify Austin STR license numbers, refuse unlicensed bookings, and remove flagged listings within 10 days of city notice, with fines up to $500 per day. Here are the license costs ($836.30 new, $385.30 renewal, two-year term), the 17% occupancy-tax stack, the quarterly filings platform collection does not cover, and the per-property books that keep it provable.
An estoppel certificate is a tenant-signed statement of rent, term, deposits, options, and defaults that legally blocks the tenant from later contradicting it; an SNDA is the three-party agreement keeping that lease alive through a foreclosure. This guide covers what a buyer should demand in each, the red flags that justify re-pricing a deal, and how confirmed deposits and prepaid rent land on the opening balance sheet.
A small landlord's walkthrough of the Housing Choice Voucher program — the lease-up sequence, the HAP contract you sign with the PHA, NSPIRE pass/fail inspections, how the payment standard and the tenant's roughly 30 percent income share split one rent into two payments, and what screening and source-of-income laws still allow.
A house hack is two tax properties under one roof — a Schedule E rental and a Schedule A home. Split shared costs by a documented percentage, depreciate only the rental half over 27.5 years, use up to $25,000 of rental losses against wages below $100,000 MAGI, and expect unrecaptured Section 1250 gain at up to 25% on prior depreciation when you sell.
Delaware taxes short-term rental stays at 4.5% of rent for agreements entered on or after January 1, 2025. Who collects depends on the booking channel — platforms remit for platform bookings, but direct-booking hosts need the $25 accommodations intermediary license and must file monthly by the 15th, even for zero-income periods. Cleaning fees, linens, and deposits are excluded from the tax base.
Since January 1, 2026, California's SB 346 lets any city or county with a conforming ordinance require Airbnb, Vrbo and other platforms to report each short-term rental's address, assessor parcel number and listing URL as often as monthly, backed by fines of up to $10,000 per day. Covers which cities already enforce (Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Diego), how transient occupancy tax works and who owes it, what back assessments with 10–25% penalties look like, and a plain-text bookkeeping setup that books TOT to a liability account, records platform-remitted tax, and reconciles channel by channel.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (Public Law 119-101, enacted July 11, 2026) bans institutional investors controlling 350+ single-family homes from buying more, with exceptions for build-to-rent, renovate-to-rent rehabs costing at least 15% of purchase price, and rent-to-own programs. Here is how the thresholds, exceptions, and a two-year grace window affect small landlords and property managers — and the ownership-count and job-cost records to set up now.
Airbnb reports the full gross booking on the owner's 1099-K and your co-host share again on yours — so $80,000 in real bookings can appear as $96,000 to the IRS. This guide explains the 2026 OBBBA changes ($20,000 and 200 transactions for 1099-K, $2,000 for 1099-NEC), which form you should receive, and the chart-of-accounts method to reconcile gross vs. net without overreporting income.
Parks earn their margin in the ledger. Submetering or RUBS recovers 80-100% of variable utility costs and typically lifts net income 20-30%, and a cost segregation study reclassifies 40-60% of depreciable basis into 5- and 15-year property that now qualifies for 100% bonus depreciation. This guide covers gross-up bill-back accounting, lot rent vs. home rent separation, intercompany flows between holding and management entities, Form 8594 allocation, and a monthly close checklist for manufactured home and RV parks.
