Geospatial Engineering for Cost Seg™
Case study · Short-term rental · Remodel
The Kenwood Twin Cabins
Cost seg lets you use part of your property's value to lower your income taxes. Here is how it worked for a 2021 single-family home, bought in 2012 and remodeled.
Where the $2.29M went
Component allocation
Year one, in dollars
| Accelerated depreciation | $509,449 |
| Total year-one deduction | $509,449 |
| Straight-line without a study | ~$37,988/yr |
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Explore the 3D PortalWhy this study reads the way it does
The furniture is itemized from the photos, not the receipts
A fire took the original home; the owner rebuilt two cabins from the ground up and placed them in service in January 2026 as a short-term rental. The build itself is fully receipt-documented ($1.5M across 147 line items). For the furnishings, the photographed Inventory, not the expense sheet, is what the study prices. Receipts prove payment; they make a poor catalog of what is actually there.
The lesson. Furnishings are the most under-documented dollars in a rental. A study that only counts what the receipts remember understates the furniture; a photographed Inventory, priced from a fixed catalog and reconciled against the building basis, recovers the rest defensibly.
The study
Six stages, from public record to engineered study.
Pick a stage to see what it did on this house.
Every part mapped and modeled
The Study Algorithm, running
The Study Algorithm
How we find the highest defensible deduction
Every house is different, so we run every supportable combination of methods and keep the biggest deduction the record can prove.
Defensibility, step by step
Only supportable methods count.
15-year site work and land improvements
Decks, paving, fencing, utilities and plantings recover over 15 years.
Your portal
Answer a few questions. We do the rest.
How the property is used, what you changed, what you furnished. We fetch the public record ourselves.
One fee, shown up front in the portal.
Turn the house, tap any part, follow the Spatial Graph and read the review.
Questions
Common questions about this study
- What does a real cost segregation study look like?
- This is a complete, engineering-reviewed cost segregation study on a short-term rental property. Every figure is computed by a deterministic engine from source documents, cited to the underlying tax authority, and reproducible, including a 13-room component reclassification and a full depreciation schedule. Addresses and client identities are changed for privacy; the facts and dollars are true engine output.
- How much does this study accelerate into the first year?
- The first-year deduction heads this page, and The Study Algorithm section builds it step by step from the run: the building's shell, each short-life class at 100% bonus depreciation, any remodel disposition and the Inventory.
- Is a cost segregation study like this defensible?
- It is built to the standards in the IRS Cost Segregation Audit Techniques Guide: each component is classified with a citation, the basis derivation is engineered rather than estimated, and every calculation is reproducible. Unlevered prepares and signs the engineering study; the property owner's CPA remains the sole tax return preparer.
- What makes these studies transparent?
- Every number traces to a source. The study shows the room-by-room allocation, the reasoning behind each component's classification, and a calculation that can be reproduced from the same inputs, not a black-box estimate.