Cost Segregation Companies Compared: How to Choose

What Unlevered is

Unlevered prepares cost segregation studies for rental homes and short-term rentals. We work from the property’s own records, price every part of the house, and sign the study. You can read a full real study before you pay.

1. Step 1

   We collect the records

   Your closing statement, photos, plans, permits and receipts. We pull the public records ourselves.

2. Step 2

   We rebuild the house part by part

   Every room, surface, fixture and appliance, measured and counted from those records.

3. Step 3

   We price and classify each part

   Your receipts first, then local rates. Each part gets its tax life from its own evidence.

4. Step 4

   We run every supportable method

   The study keeps the largest deduction the record supports. Engineering and audit review it, then Unlevered Inc. signs it.

What matters when you choose

Price is the easiest thing to compare and the least useful on its own. These five criteria are what separate a study you can defend from a number you can’t.

1. 1

   Method

   Is the study engineered from your property's own documents, generated by DIY software you drive yourself, or estimated from an online questionnaire? Engineering is the method the IRS Cost Segregation Audit Techniques Guide is written around.

2. 2

   Who signs, and who carries the audit posture

   A professional-signed study means someone stands behind the component classifications if the return is examined. A DIY tool leaves that posture with you. Either can be right. Know which one you're buying.

3. 3

   Can you read a real report first?

   Most providers show a calculator or a visual teaser and ask you to buy on trust. The fastest way to judge a study is to read a finished one, page by page, before you pay.

4. 4

   Turnaround

   DIY software and questionnaire tools return a number in minutes; engineered studies take longer because a person rebuilds the property. Faster usually means less engineering.

5. 5

   Price transparency and property fit

   Some firms publish a price; several don't. And a provider built for large commercial buildings is a different fit than one built for a single short-term rental. Match the tool to your property first.

Three kinds of provider

Almost every cost-seg company falls into one of three groups. Each has a strength and a trade-off.

Where Unlevered fits

Five things the market leaves open. Unlevered doesn’t beat every provider on every axis, and the table above says where it doesn’t.

• Nobody lets you read a real report first

  RE Cost Seg and Overline show a visual preview; the larger firms show a calculator. None publishes an ungated study you can read end to end. Unlevered publishes complete anonymized studies with the basis walk, the room-by-room reclassification, the citations, and the depreciation schedule, so you can judge the work before you buy it.

• The market splits cheap-but-unsigned against engineered-but-opaque

  On one side, DIY software is inexpensive and instant but leaves you to defend your own file. On the other, engineered firms do real work but keep the price and the report behind a form. Unlevered sits in the middle: engineered, signed, and open about both price and method.

• The component detail is buried in the PDF

  A real study's room-by-room, component-by-component breakdown is the substance of the deduction, and it usually lives 30–100 pages deep where no prospect sees it before purchase. Unlevered shows that detail by building, floor, room, and component in every study it publishes.

• “CPA optional” is unoccupied

  DIY hands you all the risk with no sign-off; engineered firms fold you into their process. Unlevered signs the engineering study and lets you loop your CPA in or leave them out. You keep your own workflow, and you never defend a DIY file alone.

• If it's examined, the workpaper is there

  Most providers hand over a study and a schedule. When an examiner asks how a number was reached, the trace is internal or buried. On Engineering + Audit Support, if the return is examined, Unlevered releases the complete, cited calculation workpaper to you or your CPA at no additional charge and helps answer the examiner's requests. Every classification is backed by its authority and every dollar is tied to its source document, so the study can be defended line by line.

Unlevered’s founder made the case for the deterministic method in Accounting Today: the core calculation must be reproducible from the same inputs, and AI only does peripheral verification.

Common questions

How do I choose a cost segregation company?

Compare on five things: the method (engineered from your property's documents, DIY software you drive, or an online questionnaire), who signs the study and therefore carries the audit posture, whether you can read a finished report before you buy, the turnaround, and whether the price is published up front. Verifiable residential prices in 2026 start around $450–$1,000 for DIY or questionnaire tools (KBKG, RE Cost Seg's Rapid Report) and $1,000–$2,320 and up for fully engineered studies (Overline, RE Cost Seg Engineered); several established firms (ETS, CSSI, Madison SPECS) don't publish a price. Match the method to your property and your audit-risk tolerance first.

How much does a cost segregation study cost?

For residential and short-term rentals, published prices in 2026 range from roughly $450–$495 for DIY software (KBKG's Residential Cost Segregator, and Cost Seg Pro from $495 per report) to $950 for a questionnaire-based Rapid Report (RE Cost Seg) and $1,000 to $2,320-plus for a fully engineered study (Overline from $1,000; RE Cost Seg Fully Engineered from $2,320). Larger engineering firms such as ETS, CSSI, and Madison SPECS don't publish residential pricing; third-party estimates put ETS around $5,000 and up. Unlevered publishes its prices, billed to the owner: The Study $2,500; Engineering + Audit Support $5,000; Multi-Unit from $7,500. As a rule, cheaper means less engineering and no professional sign-off.

What's the difference between DIY and engineered cost segregation?

DIY tools such as KBKG's self-guided software let you answer questions and generate a depreciation schedule yourself in minutes, with no engineer or CPA signing the result, so you carry the audit posture. An engineered study has a professional rebuild the property's components from source documents and stand behind the classifications; Overline's studies are signed by a named cost-seg engineer, and firms like ETS, CSSI, and Madison SPECS perform the work in-house. Engineered costs more and takes longer, but it is the method built to the IRS Cost Segregation Audit Techniques Guide.

Is a DIY cost segregation study risky?

It shifts the risk onto you. With DIY software there's no engineer or CPA signing the study, so if the return is examined you are defending your own component classifications and basis allocation. That can be fine for a simple, well-documented property and an owner who knows the rules. DIY is faster and far cheaper. The trade-off is that no one else is accountable for the numbers. An engineered, signed study exists so a professional stands behind the work. Unlevered prepares and signs the engineering study, keeps your CPA optional, and never leaves you to defend a DIY file alone.