President Donald Trump modified The Tax Benefits of Homeownership when he passed The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. This was the largest overhaul of the tax code in three decades essentially eliminating the tax benefits of buying a house. Does it still make sense to buy a house in this housing market? In this episode we discuss the benefits of homeownership and why many out there can still benefit from tax writeoffs of owning a home while we help you become The Educated HomeBuyer.

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Connect with me 👇 Jeb Smith (huntington beach Realtor/orange county real estate) DRE 01407449 Coldwell Banker Realty ➡I N S T A G R A M ➳ https://www.instagram.com/jebsmith ➡Y O U T U B E ➳https://www.youtube.com/c/JebSmith

Connect with me 👇 Josh Lewis (Huntington Beach Certified Mortgage Expert) DRE 01209148 Buywise Mortgage M:714-916-5727 E: josh@buywisemortgage.com ➡I N S T A G R A M ➳ https://www.instagram.com/joshlewiscmc ➡Y O U T U B E ➳https://www.youtube.com/c/buywiseborrowsmart

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For Show Notes, See Below 👇

[00:00:00] Jeb Smith, Huntington Beach Realtor: Did Trump kill the tax benefits of homeownership? Now we’re not going to get all political on today’s episode, but we are going to talk about the idea of homeownership and some of the benefits that come along with it. Josh, when we talk about homeownership, one of the things that we often talk about is, having a fixed payment.

Appreciation, forced savings, that sort of thing. And one of the things that kind of comes at the tail end of that conversation are the tax benefits. And this is something that for a long period of time, people pushed tax benefits of homeownership. And, we’ve had people recently, even on other podcasts mention that the tax benefits of owning a home are essentially gone.

So what we wanted to do in today’s episode is give you some examples. Break down what we’re talking about when we’re talking about tax benefits. Are there any actually out there at the moment? And give you some examples of who benefits in these scenarios and who doesn’t benefit in these scenarios.

So with that said, Josh, let’s go in. 

[00:01:13] Josh Lewis, Certified Mortgage Consultant: And let’s be clear here. We’re going to focus on the primary, large, immediate potential and prior tax benefits of owning a home. So we’re not going to go into the long term capital gains exclusion, being able to take deductions for the costs on your mortgage, points being paid, that type of stuff.

These are the big ones. They’re ongoing, recurring. And when people talk about, “Hey, there’s incentives from the government in the tax code for owning a home.” This is what they’re talking about. So two primary pieces of that. The big one, larger in size and larger in benefit for people historically is the mortgage interest deduction.

So prior to the tax cuts and jobs act of 2017. Prior to that, you could deduct interest on a mortgage up to a million dollars. So if you were wealthy and you took out a $2-3 million mortgage, A lot of that was not deductible. But for the 98 percent of people who were getting a mortgage of a million dollars or less, you could deduct the interest.

So if you had a $300… And make it easy on me, a $400,000 mortgage at 5%, that first year, you’re going to pay roughly $20,000 in interest. It decreases over time as you’re paying down the principal, but call it $20,000. The secondary, nice chunk, depending on where you are in the country and what your property tax rates look like, you could deduct property taxes also paid.

For us here in California, we generally estimate at 1.25% percent. Using that $400,000 purchase price, you would have roughly $5,000 in property taxes. So in that instance, we’ve got $25,000 of itemized deductions. 

So let’s start the conversation there. So we know what we’re talking about, the mortgage interest deduction and the property tax deduction. And let’s talk about what [00:03:00] that 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did because it made several important changes that whittled away the benefit of that for everyone. But especially those buying more affordable homes in parts of the country that don’t have high home prices. 

[00:03:14] Jeb Smith, Huntington Beach Realtor: Yeah. And before we get all the keyboard warriors out there saying that we hate Trump and that we’re liberal and all of this other stuff. This isn’t about Trump. When this was passed, he was the president at hand when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was passed. So he was the president when that happened. 

Are we blaming him for this? No. But we are talking about pros and cons of it and how it affects you as a homeowner. 

With that said too, I’d like to take a minute and ask a favor. If you find any value in these videos at all, if you’re on YouTube, do us a favor and hit that thumbs up. Maybe you’re listening to us on Spotify or, Apple. If you could take the time, rate us, review us, leave a comment, all of that stuff helps the algorithm helps it push out to more people like you and ultimately helps us accomplish our goal of educating more homebuyers. 

So with that said, Josh let’s talk about tax deduction for homeowners and dive into that in a little bit more detail.

[00:04:05] Josh Lewis, Certified Mortgage Consultant: Absolutely. So you just were able to see what can be deducted. Most Americans prior to owning a home don’t itemize. So to do this, you have to itemize your deductions. There are other things. 

[00:04:18] Jeb Smith, Huntington Beach Realtor: Itemized. What does that mean? 

[00:04:19] Josh Lewis, Certified Mortgage Consultant: So there are certain things that you can deduct on your taxes. You have to keep records of them. You have to provide an accounting of that in your tax return. 

So for most of us, the big ones are mortgage interest and property taxes. The biggest change with the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act basically was a simplification for people. They massively increased the standard deduction. So if you don’t itemize, the government just assigns a standard deduction that says you can take this amount off the top of your income. 

You don’t pay taxes on every dollar that you earn. You pay taxes on your gross income, less your deductions. So the big thing that the government did is they increased the size of the standard deduction. And they increased it a lot. So for 2023, this has gone up since that time, but we went from a very low number and this is awesome. I don’t have it in the notes here, Jeb, but married filing jointly or filing jointly prior to 2018 was about $12-13,000 was the standard deduction. In that range. 

It went up to $27,000 or went up to $26,000. And for 2023 it’s $27,700. So if you don’t want to do accounting, if you don’t want to own a home and don’t have those deductions, as a married person or someone filing jointly with another person, you get that $27,700 deduction.

So for most people filing jointly, it’s going to eat into the benefit of you taking that additional deduction. Now, I guess in this [00:06:00] context, the upside of higher interest rates is many people are still paying more than that $27,700 in interest. 

 If we look at a $400,000 mortgage at 7%, now they’re gonna pay $28,000. So there would be a benefit in itemizing that and taking the 28,000 plus property taxes versus just taking the standard deduction. Now, if you’re at a higher cost area and you have a $600,000 or $700,000 mortgage at 7%, it exceeds it by a lot. 

But let’s look at something else. If you are in Iowa, and you have a $300,000 purchase, and you’re married, that 7 percent interest rate, the first year is going to generate about $21,000 of mortgage interest. Does not exceed the standard deduction.

So when we’re talking about benefits changing, going away, the number one biggest change in 2017 that makes it where less people benefit period, and those that benefit, benefit to a lesser degree is that maximization of the standard deduction. 

[00:07:07] Jeb Smith, Huntington Beach Realtor: And understand listening to this can be difficult, right? When you start throwing numbers out and examples out can be difficult to understand. So we are going to do some examples here and break them down in a little bit more detail. 

Josh does a newsletter that he sends out every single week and we’ll put a link in the description if you want to sign up for that newsletter where you can go and add yourself to that list.

But this past week, broke down some examples in there and even reading some of the examples where I have the numbers in front of me, you have to go back and look at the numbers to make sure you’re understanding the numbers properly. So don’t beat yourself up. If you’re listening to this going all these numbers are just really hard to understand. I’m having a hard time breaking it down. 

Just go with the overall the overarching idea here in, in what we’re trying to portray, in, in the episode and helping you understand it. And if you have specific questions, it’s really a tax professional question, right? We’re not tax professionals. 

Josh likes to play one. But the reality is there are people out there that do this for a living, and those are the conversations that you want to have. And so with that said, Josh, before we go any further, is this a conversation that people should be having with a tax professional prior to buying a house?

Or is it just an added benefit like, hey, I might get some additional deductions by home ownership. Or is it someplace they should start? What are your thoughts 

[00:08:29] Josh Lewis, Certified Mortgage Consultant: Prior to these changes, I would say, absolutely, you need to consult a professional if you use a tax preparer. What I will say is if you’re using TurboTax or any of the other softwares, they all have pretty robust what ifs in there.

So they know what your situation looked like last year. And you’re going to say, okay, what if this year we have a baby? What if this year we buy a house? And then it’s going to ask you some questions and there’s a cool, how big of a house? Cool. What size mortgage, what interest rate, what are the property taxes look like?

And that’s what your tax preparer or CPA or enrolled [00:09:00] agent is going to do as well. They’re going to ask you, okay, cool, what are you thinking of doing? And they will help you quantify, number one, are you going to get any benefit? And number two, how big is that benefit? 

So what I will say, we’ve always looked at this as one of the important four factors of why homeowners build greater wealth over the long haul than renters.

I almost don’t include this anymore. Because the further you get into it, if interest rates go back down as you pay that mortgage down and it gets smaller. And inflation keeps indexing up the standard deduction. It’s not going to be a benefit for most people after 10, 11, 12 years. 

So could be a benefit today. It’s a nice to have, it would be nice to quantify it, but I wouldn’t say you have to figure this out and include this in your decision making. 

[00:09:44] Jeb Smith, Huntington Beach Realtor: So with that said, Josh, you mentioned filing jointly. We haven’t really talked about the idea of single filing and if there’s a benefit there, but I guess the question is who at the moment is still benefiting in this situation? 

Who is reaping the rewards of tax benefits? Are you and your bride still reaping the rewards? That sort of thing. Let’s put it into real life scenarios.

[00:10:06] Josh Lewis, Certified Mortgage Consultant: Let’s go back. Let’s jump in the time machine with little Josh back in 1996, doing his very first purchase mortgage.

Many of you will find this impossible to believe, but at that time in Anaheim, California, great entry level first time buyer market, you could get a three bedroom house for about $130,000. Nice ones were $150-160,000, but you could get a house for $130,000. 

So let’s just say you got $130,000 mortgage. At that time rates were 8%. So you would be paying about $10,400 in interest that year. In California, property taxes about 1.25%. So that $130,000 gives you $1,625 a year in property taxes. 

So that puts us at about $12,000 total deduction. So what was the standard deduction at that time? If you were single you had a $4,000 standard deduction. So itemizing just gave you $8,000 more to deduct off of your income. 

If you were married, that standard deduction was $6,700. So we had a little less than $6,000 of additional deductions. So you said, cool, what does that mean? 

When we talk about your tax savings, we want to look at your marginal rate, the rate on the high end. Not the effective, not the average that you pay across all of your income, but what you’re paying on those top dollars, because these deductions come off of your top level of income.

So again, in that time machine, married people in ’96 were paying 31 percent on the income from $41,000 to about $100,000. Single people were paying 28 percent from $25-60,000 and 31% from $60-125,000. 

So jointly filing, buying $130,000 home, you were probably paying about 28 to 31 percent federal, and you were probably paying, in California, about 9 percent to the state.

But let’s say California is a high income tax state. Say most States you would have been about 5%. You’re at about a 36 percent total marginal tax bracket there. So that additional $6,000, that additional $8,000, [00:12:00] you’re saving about a third of it. 

So if you’re married, you had $6,000 and we save a third of it. It’s a little more than $2,000. And you go that’s not very much. It’s like $180 a month. Why do I care? 

Remember the mortgage payment on that $130,000 home is $1200 so you’re getting almost a 15, 18 percent reduction in that monthly payment back then when the itemization resulted in a much larger benefit to you. 

So that’s why when you talk to your uncle, your grandparents, your parents, and they go, Oh, you got to remember you’re getting a big tax benefit.

That is when they grew up and that is when they were buying homes and seeing a nice benefit. 

[00:12:40] Jeb Smith, Huntington Beach Realtor: No, I mean, even when I did loans back in 2000 to 2012, one of the things we would often talk about is we would tell people, Hey look at what you’re paying in rent, and then compare that to how much your mortgage payment would be, and then you have to factor in the tax deductions and what have you.

And so oftentimes we would give an example Hey, if you’re paying $2,000 in rent, I don’t remember the number we would say, but we would say effectively like you’re paying somewhere around $2400-2500 in a mortgage payment already by doing exactly what you’re doing now. 

So it made sense to use that idea in order to get people accustomed with, Hey, yeah, you’re paying a little bit more, but there are some benefits that you’re getting outside of forced savings, appreciation, all of the other factors that are really the real important ones, to be completely honest, but you were getting this additional thing.

We can’t say that anymore. Because the tax cuts, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 changed the dynamic there. So with that, let’s talk about the factors, in simple terms, what’s the easiest way for someone to understand if they’re getting a benefit from this without having to go to the next step and talking to a CPA.

Is there an easy calculation? Is there something they can do? What are we looking at? 

[00:13:59] Josh Lewis, Certified Mortgage Consultant: Let’s look at it this way. Figure out your filing status. Are you filing as a single person, filing as a head of household, filing jointly? Because that’s easy. So now for 2023, what does that mean? If I’m single, my standard deduction is $13,850. 

If I’m filing jointly, married, filing separately, you each get $13,850. So $27,700. And if you’re filing as a head of household, $20,800. So now we know that’s my standard deduction. 

If I don’t itemize, whether I’m a renter or an owner, I have that as my minimum. So now we say, am I going to generate a tax deduction larger than that by becoming a homeowner? So couple of easy ways to do this.

You’re going to look at what size mortgage am I thinking of taking out? Is it $300,000? Is it $500,000? Is it $700,000? 

What is the going interest rate that I’m being quoted? Now, this is dumb math rounding, and it’s estimating it slightly high. And remember that this will go down over time, the amount of interest that you’re paying as you reduce the principle, but say you’re getting a $400,000 mortgage at 7%, that’s [00:15:00] $28,000.

So you say, okay, I’m going to pay $28,000 in interest that first year. Now, depending on where you are, in California, you can estimate your property taxes at what am I purchasing times one and a quarter percent. It can be a little higher in, in some areas, but for 95 percent of homes that are not brand new construction built in the last 10 years, one and a quarter is the number you’re looking at.

For anywhere else in the country, most ways you can do is go to Redfin, look at the sales and tax history, and it’ll tell you what the taxes are on that property and take that number, add that to the interest. And if it exceeds the standard deduction, you’re going to get some benefit. 

It’s gonna be much smaller than the example we used back in 1996 because of how large the standard deductions are. So you’ve already been getting that standard deduction. So the benefit of owning is only the additional write-off, the additional deduction by the amount that the property taxes and mortgage interest exceed the standard deduction that you are eligible for. 

[00:15:57] Jeb Smith, Huntington Beach Realtor: Again I hear this and I go, I understand taxes, I understand all of this. I can see where it can be difficult listening to this on online and trying to figure it out. 

Now, I understand now there were some changes, Josh, that we mentioned earlier in here. So what happens if you have a mortgage that’s a million dollars, $1.2 million, $1.5 million, it exceeds that $750,000 cap which, used to be a higher amount, then what are we doing? It is there an easy calculation there or is it more complicated? 

[00:16:29] Josh Lewis, Certified Mortgage Consultant: You still get the deduction on the interest paid on the first $750,000. So you will be able to take a portion of that. So you had a million dollar mortgage. You’re going to take 75 percent of the interest that first year, and it will keep going down until as long as you owe $750,000 or more, you’re going to be able to take that benefit. Someday when you’ve paid it down and you owe $600,000, you’re going to get the interest deduction there, but you’re never going to be able to deduct anything more than $750k.

But just because you take a mortgage bigger than $750k doesn’t mean you get nothing. You only get the deduction on that $750,000. 

[00:17:02] Jeb Smith, Huntington Beach Realtor: And something we talked about leading into this was the idea that rates are, high right now compared to what most people are used to over the last couple of years, sitting somewhere today, seven, seven and a half percent, depending on loan type and down payment and all different factors as rates come down and you refinance, which most people will take advantage of if there is enough savings to make it make sense, that means you’re paying less interest.

So in turn, does that mean less of a benefit on when it comes to taxes? 

[00:17:31] Josh Lewis, Certified Mortgage Consultant: Absolutely. Jeb, the example we used here is a $400,00 mortgage at 7%. That’s $28,000. It exceeds the joint filer’s standard deduction. Let’s say in two years, that couple goes back and refinances to 5%. Now they’re paying $20,000.

So unless they’re in a really high property tax state, they’re not going to exceed that standard deduction, and there would be no benefit. We can also flash forward 10 years if they get no opportunity , if rates stay high forever, and they stay at 7%.

In [00:18:00] 10 years, they’re going to owe $320,000 on that, and that 7% is going to be $21,000 of interest. And that standard deduction will keep going up year after year and it’s probably $30,000 by then. So whether it’s through a principal pay down or refinancing to a lower rate, the benefit is likely to go away at some point in the first 10 years of ownership, the way everything is structured.

And, Jeb, a point that we didn’t talk about that is important for people in high tax States like us here in California, we talked about the California State tax rate being nine, 10, 11, 13 percent on the high end for the highest earners. So when you look at that, the other thing that the tax cuts and jobs act did was limited the deduction for state and local taxes to $10,000 total.

So let’s use an example. For me here in California, my property taxes are almost $8,000 a year. So we used to get the full deduction on that. If I make $100,000 taxable income and you’re paying 9%, that’s $9,000 right there. So I’ve got $17,000 of state income taxes and property taxes that was previously deductible. That is now limited. 

Now, if I were in Texas, first of all, my property taxes would be higher, but I wouldn’t have any state income tax. I’m in Florida, no state income tax. So I’m going to be more likely to benefit from all of my property tax deduction. But there’s just limits all the way around. 

There’s an additional benefit to not itemizing in that higher standard deduction. And then there’s limits to what you can do with the property taxes, especially if you’re in a state income tax state and a high state income tax state, especially. 

[00:19:35] Jeb Smith, Huntington Beach Realtor: Yeah. And we often talk about real estate being local, and this is really one of those times that you have to get a really good idea of your area, and statewide state taxes and all of the different factors that play into it, right?

Cause we’re talking California here in some of the examples that were given. But if you live in a state like, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, some of these that don’t have a state income tax, it changes the numbers. In some cases in your favor. 

But we’ve also said, Josh, and we didn’t really talk about this in real degree here that the lower your mortgage amount, really the less of a benefit, I think it did come up, but really pointing it out, if you’re buying a, $150,000, $200,000 mortgage in middle America and you’re filing jointly, there’s very little benefit on the tax side.

But with that said, we kind of talked about the other factors and we skipped over them real quickly, but I think it’s important to just go through what they mean, because if this is somebody’s first episode, listening to us, What are we talking about when we’re talking about fixing the payment, when we’re talking about appreciation, when we’re talking about the forced savings account, when it comes to homeownership.

If we look at this is a stool, we got a four legged stool, taxes are a leg on the stool, but they’re not keeping the stool from falling down. The other three legs are essentially keeping the stool from falling down. What are we talking about on those other three factors, Josh?

[00:20:56] Josh Lewis, Certified Mortgage Consultant: If we rank them in order of importance, Jeb, the number one most [00:21:00] important factor is that there is no 30 year fixed rent. So as a homeowner with a 30 year fixed mortgage, 80 to 90 percent of your payment is fixed.

Yes. Your property taxes and insurance can and will go up over time, but the vast majority of your payment will be fixed and eventually at some point in the future, will go away. 

So an example that I used in the newsletter a couple of weeks ago, $500,000 purchase, 5 percent down. Right now, you’re paying a pretty significant premium to own that with rates high. It’s about $1200-1400 a month more to own that than to rent. 

People go easy decision, right? I’m going to continue renting. But if we see 3 percent annual rent inflation, which over the last 15, 20 years, it’s been closer to 4%, 3.7%, 3.8%, somewhere along the lines. If it moderates and it’s 3%, within the next 10 years the payment on the house will be less. 

So a hundred percent correct that today renting is cheaper on a monthly basis, but that goes away over time. And 20, 30 years down the line, you honestly don’t want to think in terms of what rents look like. Go back 20, 25 years and see what rents look like and you’ll be shocked at how low they were.

And as high as rents are today, I think in 20 to 25 years, people will look back at how reasonable rents were today and how they won’t be going forward. So fixing your housing cost is probably to me, the number one, most important.

Next one there, Jeb to me and in rank order of importance is forced savings. We talked about how, when you make a payment and we get this all the time, it’s probably one of the biggest misconceptions, people that are anti housing or have talked themselves into renting forever. What they will say is, “Oh, in the first 10 years, you’re not, it’s all going to interest. You’re not paying anything.”

That same example, $500,000 purchase. $475,000 loan amount. In the first 10 years, you pay $70,000 of principal. So in essence, you saved $70,000 in a forced savings account. You didn’t have a choice. You had to put the money in there every month. 

It’s difficult to get it out because you’re going to pay money to go do a cash out refinance. So it goes into a locked box. And that is one of the primary reasons why over the long haul homeowners accumulate a lot of equity. 

The third piece also relates back to that equity. So the example we’re using Jeb is $500,000, 5 percent down. You made a $25,000 investment, but you benefit from all of the appreciation on that investment.

So if that $500,000 property goes up 3% the first year, you made $15,000 on a $25,000 investment. So when we look long haul, we’ve seen 4.5, 5.5, 7 percent over the last 30, 40 years, depending on where you are in the country. Nationwide, since the eighties, it’s been about 5.5%, according to the Case Schiller index.

Long haul, what you can say is home appreciation is likely to exceed overall inflation. So whatever the inflation rate is, you are going to get a little bit more than that. So that return over the long haul, the leveraged appreciation is why people end up [00:24:00] making much more as a homeowner in terms of building wealth, than someone renting, you fix your payment, you have the forced savings, you benefit from the slow and steady appreciation over time.

And the last benefit Jeb had always been the tax benefits, but as you can see in the early going, some people will get a small benefit. Again, most of the examples I’ve gone through are like $100, $150 a month. The best example I could come up with was someone in Texas with no state income tax, higher income, higher side of the mortgage there.

They got to about $400 savings. That’s going to be like your absolute best case. Most people are going to see somewhere between zero and $200 a monthly tax benefit. So when we look at it, it’s nice to have, but it’s not something that’s going to push you over the top to say, I’m doing this. 

[00:24:44] Jeb Smith, Huntington Beach Realtor: I think what I’ve seen or what I’ve noticed, Josh, is the people that say there’s absolutely no benefit tax benefit to owning a house therefore, I’m not going to own it are the people that aren’t buying for another reason. The fear, they’re just not in a position to do it, they think prices are too high or whatever it is. It’s just, it’s giving them the reason in their minds to say it’s just not worth it because it’s not there.

Understand the things that Josh mentioned a moment ago are really the reasons and Josh said, the most important one being the fact that you’re fixing your payment in a period of time when inflation, when rents continue to go up yearly. 

I’ve given this example several times. I’ll use me as an example. I bought my house back in 2012. At that time, what it cost me to buy that house and what the rents were for a property of that size were probably about the same thing. I might’ve been paying a little bit more to, to own the house at that time than it was to rent.

Today, I could rent it for about $2,000 more than my mortgage payment. Now I’ve been able to take benefit of lower interest rates during that period of time. But even then, I’ve still been in a position where my mortgage payment is significantly less than what it would cost to rent because rent inflation is continuing to go up.

 I look at the house across the street from me that’s for rent and I go, somebody’s going to rent that for $5200 a month. Are you nuts? And it’s like a property that needs a lot of work, small bedrooms, everything. 

Not my property. It’s not comparable to my property, but I go, somebody is going to end up paying that. That is crazy to me. And so to each his own, this isn’t a push to get you to go out and buy a house, but it is an eye opening conversation, things that you need to be looking at, right? 

It’s not, Hey, I heard there are no tax savings, therefore I’m not going to do it. Consider everything. Consider all of the things that we’ve talked about.

Consult a professional. Have that conversation and ultimately, Josh buy when it’s the right time in your life. We say it all the time and having a conversation last night with somebody else saying the exact same thing. If maybe it’s not the right time and that’s okay, don’t put yourself, don’t make it be the right time because Of some other factor when it’s the right time is when you should buy a home.

Make sure you have money in the bank. Make sure you have savings. Make sure you’re okay with the payment and any other added benefits that come along with it, because you’re going to have to pay rent to somebody, whether it’s, to, to your landlord or to [00:27:00] yourself, to some degree. That’s the right move in my opinion.

[00:27:03] Josh Lewis, Certified Mortgage Consultant: For whatever reason you decide now is not the right time. I might be getting married. I might be getting divorced, might be moving out of state, might be getting my dream job. There’s a million and one reasons why owning may not be the right decision for you right now. 

What is always the right decision is to work on becoming the type of person who can become a successful homeowner. Work on your income, your earnings, get promoted at your job. Maximize your income potential. Maximize your credit score, minimize your debt, maximize your savings and investment.

And if homeownership never becomes a reality for you, those things will still have served you well through life. I don’t know that there’s another way around it in terms of achieving financial freedom. You don’t have to become a homeowner, but you do have to do those other things. 

And if you do them, they will help you in terms of homeownership and kind of Jeb, bringing it back full circle to the question we asked in the show, did Trump’s tax cuts kill the tax benefits of homeownership?

For the most part, yes. But not for everyone. It’s complicated. You probably should talk to a tax advisor or at least grab your tax software and run through it. It’s going to come down to multiple things. Your tax filing status, single head of household, filing joint. The size of your mortgage, the interest rate you’re paying, the property taxes in your state, your income and your state income tax rate.

So it’s not usually massively difficult. It’s not some physics equation. But if you don’t deal with it every day like we do, it can be hard to wrap your mind around, but there’s some calculators online that you can go through to determine, is there going to be any tax benefit for you in the early years of homeownership?

But at the end of the day, don’t make that be a really big factor in why you’re deciding to become a homeowner. 

[00:28:40] Jeb Smith, Huntington Beach Realtor: And I think that’s a good place to leave it. So with that Buy Right, Borrow Smart, Build Wealth. Until next time, adios 

[00:28:47] Josh Lewis, Certified Mortgage Consultant: amigos! 

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