Home Staging Fees are Tax Deductible

Tax tip: Home staging fees are deductible expenses

In today’s market, real estate professionals will be even more competitive in their approaches to attracting buyers. The home staging business is quickly becoming a popular tool used for making one’s home more appealing.

Part of the real estate professional’s job is to suggest ways to improve the likelihood of quicker turnover of their inventory. A professional home stager provides a service designed to sell your home.

From this perspective, if you hire the stager directly, then they are performing a service with the specific purpose of selling your home. Therefore, yes, the cost and expenses incurred for hiring this professional would be considered deductible when selling your home and may be netted against any gain on the sale, along with commissions paid to the Realtor and legal fees.
Specifically, home staging would be considered “advertising fees” and would fall under the allowable selling expenses.

Second, you may be able to negotiate with your Realtor and add the expense to the commission paid for selling the house. Either way, the same result is accomplished, and the services provided will be considered deductible.

That said, if the home stager recommends the entire interior needs a fresh coat of paint, these selling expenses are not allowable deductions.

Bottom line: Paying for the home stager’s services is deductible, while expenses for repairs, maintenance or permanent redecorating of the house are not.

Link to article: http://www.kansascity.com/business/v-print/story/551615.html

Smart Move Design is a Home Staging and Redesign company located near Syracuse, NY and serves the Central and Northern New York areas.