Island Walk Real Estate

06/21/2024

Happy birthday to my lovely, wonderful wife, Nalan Ozcanli Martin! 🎂🎉😘🥳

02/23/2024

We're hosting an Open House at 1260 Cobble Glen Dr Port Charlotte, FL Saturday (tomorrow) Feb 24th from 12 - 3 pm. Drop by and see for yourself!

08/23/2023

Beware of dishonest HOA boards.

The lesson for Fla. HOAs: Elect honest, reliable people to the board. Fla.’s largest HOA has spent $2.3M on lawyers after losing millions under a corrupt board of directors.

07/22/2023

Disclaimer: I'm not a financial advisor, accountant, or attorney. I am a real estate broker associate with Pearson Smith Realty in Virginia and United Real Estate Infinity in Naples, Florida. You should consult one or all of the above before making any decisions. The following is for informational purposes only.

You might know that if you sell your primary house and have a big enough gain (profit), you may have to pay capital gain taxes. But, the IRS allows a tax-free gain of up to $250K for single owners and $500K for married couples if you file a joint return.

But did you know that if one of the spouses dies, the surviving spouse can still get the $500K gain tax-free as long as they sell the house within two years? As the clock starts clicking, a recently widowed spouse should keep this in mind if they've had considerable equity gain in the property since the original purchase.

How is the gain calculated? The sales price of the house, minus the original price of the house plus expenses. The original cost of the house is referred to as the basis. The basis is increased by real estate expenses and improvements to the home.

For example, if 25 years ago you paid $100,000 for the home, had real estate expenses of $10,000, plus invested $50,000 over the years finishing the basement and adding a patio, your basis would now be $160,000.

Let's say you sell the house and the sales price is $700,000 and you have $30,000 in real estate expenses. The $30,000 gets added to the $160,000 basis, raising it to $190,000. So your capital gain is $700,000 minus the basis of $190,000, which equals a $510,000 gain (profit). If you're able to avoid the capital gain tax on $500,000 of the profit, you will only pay taxes on $10,000.

There are IRS rules concerning this exclusion. According to the IRS website, you must meet the ownership test and the use test to claim the exclusion. You must have owned and lived in the home as your main home for a period of at least two years out of the five years prior to the date of sale. There are other rules that you can check out on the IRS website at https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc701

I highly recommend you keep a folder with the receipts of all the improvements you make to your home. I also recommend you keep records on a spreadsheet. This will come in handy when it comes time to calculate your capital gain, plus it will be very useful information when you list your house to potential buyers. You may be surprised at how many improvements you've made over the years and you don't want to forget any.
I hope this helps!

07/19/2023

The backlog for home buyers is getting larger.

As a percentage of all homes, it’s the lowest one in at least a decade. In the suburbs, it’s a bit higher at 1.6%, but that’s one-third less than the 2.4% in 2019.

07/12/2023

Losing your data can be catastrophic. There are ways to protect it!

Disasters can strike at any time and the best we can do is be prepared.

07/10/2023

Thinking about selling your home? Here are nine projects to tackle before putting it on the market. 🏠 Have questions? Give me a call!

07/09/2023

Thinking about adding solar panels to your home? ☀️ Check this out and then give me a call if you have any other questions!

07/08/2023

The chart below is the year-over-year comparison from May 2022 to May 2023 for single-family homes in Collier County, FL. The major stats show a decline including the number of closed sales, dollar volume, cash sales, medium price, medium time to contract, medium time to close, new listings, etc. The market is clearly softening.

07/05/2023

The bottom line is important when deciding whether to accept an offer or not, but so are other considerations.

Your bottom line shouldn't be your only consideration when selling your home. Keep these four things in mind as well.

06/28/2023

The worst kitchen design that will make you cringe 🤣