Jodi Nielsen: Unlocking The Power of Cost Segregations On Your Real Estate Investments

Benjamin Franklin famously said back in 1789 "Nothing is certain but death and taxes." Jodi Nielsen would quickly chime in "I can help defer one of them." Jodi is a Sr. Account Executive for Cost Segregation Services Inc (CSSI) which has performed over 40,000 Cost Segregation studies. The goal of having a cost segregation study on your investment property is to help accelerate up to 40% of a building's depreciation so that you can use your money now to help make more money. For every 500k on a building, they find that they are able to provide a tax savings benefit in the range of 40-80k (note: this is an estimate only. Your situation may be different).

After getting her degree in Nuclear Medicine and working as a Administrator of a Medical Clinic, co-owning a shipping and packing company, and serving as a consultant, Jodi found her home working for CSSI. She is extremely passionate about helping real estate investors free up capital that they can use to continue to grow their wealth. In this episode, we walk through the basics of Cost Segregation studies, who it is a good fit for, and the benefits of how it can help you in your real estate investing journey. 

In this episode hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
👍 The top benefits of having a cost segregation study done on your rental property
👍 How cash saved from cost segregation can be reinvested and be used to pay down the building, buy new equipment, or hire more people.
👍 Strategies for doing major improvements on your property
👍 The potential for higher returns when utilizing your money now instead of waiting to sell
 

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Ever wondered how to amplify your real estate returns without diving into a sea of tax jargon? Cost segregation expert Jody Nielsen makes it clear that no matter the property – be it retail strips, warehouses, or condos – if you're looking to optimize cash flow and grab hold of significant tax benefits, this episode is your guiding light. Jody's approachable insights and commitment to client understanding underscore the value of seeking out a consultant who can simplify complex financial matters. Discover how changing from straight-line to accelerated depreciation can work in your favor, and how even properties valued at $150,000 can unlock substantial tax savings. Tune in to transform your approach to real estate investment and tax strategy, and learn how to contact Jody for a personalized walk through potential bene

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everybody, welcome to Real Freedom Building Time and Financial Freedom through Real Estate. And today's episode is actually going to be a little bit in the archives, and so we're talking about a really important topic, especially as we're coming up on tax time, which is cost segregation studies. So for those of you that invest in real estate, and if you haven't looked into it, a cost segregation study could be a great way to help lower your taxable income, offset some income and reduce, possibly, your taxes that you have to pay, and so this is not tax advice or investment advice, but a cost segregation study is really important, and so many investors aren't aware of it. So we wanted to go back and play for you this episode with Jody Nielsen, as we go over what a cost segregation study is, how it works and how it can benefit you and your real estate investing journey. So, without further ado, here is our episode on cost segregation studies. Welcome to the Real Freedom Podcast, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.

Speaker 1: 1:13

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Real Freedom Podcast, where we talk about building time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. And today we're talking about a concept that maybe a lot of you don't know and don't understand, which is cost segregation. And so I'm going to start off with a quote of something that happened 234 years ago, back in 1789. Benjamin Franklin said the famous quote Nothing is certain but death and taxes. And our guest today, jody Nielsen, would say and I can help you defer one of those things. And so we're going to talk about cost segregation today.

Speaker 1: 1:51

Jody works for Cost Segregation Services Inc. Which is a national engineer-based company performing over 40,000 cost segregation studies, and we'll talk about what it is and how you can use it. But think about this For every $500,000 that you have in buildings or in assets, the tax savings that people can experience is typically between $40,000 and $80,000. So, as we look at our analysis of cash flow, appreciations, returns and all that, how do we help quantify some of those potential tax savings? By doing something like a cost segregation. You're looking at $40,000 to $80,000, potentially on a $500,000 building. So a little bit about Jody. She has a bachelor's degree in nuclear medicine, absolutely prepared her for her career here today. Also has worked as an administrator of a medical clinic, co-owner of a shipping and packing company and consulting businesses to help them with their finances and with their cash flow here. So, jody, we're so excited to have you on the show.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Well, thank you, mike. I appreciate you giving me the invite and I love to help people and give them knowledge. You know you don't know what you don't know and cost segregation is something that many people do not know about. As you mentioned, we have done over 40,000 studies. We've been in business since 2001. Cost segregation the concept of it is it's not new. It's been around since 1997. So this is something basically, if you own a building, you're sitting on cash. We just need to get it out for you. So what cost segregation? The words kind of sound like. What is that? It's basically, your building consists of nine building systems and up to 220 building components.

Speaker 2: 3:43

What we do as an engineering based tax consulting firm is we break out what we can in your building into five, seven or 15 year life and by doing this we can typically up to 40% of the building we can break out and by doing this we accelerate the depreciation. So, as you had mentioned, mike, what can you do with that cash flow? It's all about cash flow. That's what I've done in all my different businesses is just help people with cash flow, and cash is king. Still, whether you decide to invest that money, you don't pay in taxes. You decide to pay down part of your building or you buy new equipment or you hire more people. If we do not, as a company, we do not file taxes. But we do work hand in hand with your CPA and I do or your tax professional I should say Many of them. They do know about it. I've never met a tax professional that is an engineer. So, just for the people listening here, we will work hand in hand with them. We make their life easier because we give them a broken down, definitive calculation of every single thing in your building, whether it's flooring, plumbing, electrical window, shades, led lighting, masonry work, anything that parking lot, outdoor signage, sidewalk.

Speaker 2: 5:25

So there's a lot of different types of buildings too, and so what I get asked a lot, mike, is if you know well, I have an Airbnb, or I have a warehouse, or I have a retail strip, I have condo. As long as you file in the United States and it's not your permanent residence, we can help you. So what we want to look at is kind of either a depreciation schedule if you've owned your building more than a year, you would have already had the building and the land broken out and then any improvements you've done over the year, because sometimes I do get, oh, it has to be a new build or brand new building I bought, not true? We look at everything. If you have a 20 year old building, there's probably not going to be any depreciation left in it that I can help you with. But what have you done to that building in those 20 years? Most people you know maybe put 50,000 one year, 100,000, another year, another 80,000. So when we look at those schedules we can be like, oh okay, well, there's still things that we can help you with. So it's always beneficial to kind of have a chat and see where things are at Now.

Speaker 2: 6:44

If you just built or bought a building, that's going to have a depreciation schedule. So at that point what we would need is your closing settlement statement and two important things that we always ask. Number one was there a 1031 exchange involved? That it's not a bad thing, it's a lot of clients do. It's just we do have to take into consideration what we need to take out for that 1031 money that was moved over. And just on side note, with 1031 exchanges, if we cost saved one building and then you 1031 into another building, typically it's going to be a bigger, more higher value building, you're going to want to keep cost saving it, because the whole concept of 1031 is defer, defer, defer, paying the tax man. So you'd want to continue to do cost aggregation. There'd be no reason not to.

Speaker 2: 7:41

The other thing was going to mention if you have a building and you are going to be doing major improvements on it. We would want to know those as well because we would add that to the cost basis. Now there's some strategies on maybe when you would do some major improvements, and that comes into kind of another fold of the onion, if you will. There's partial asset disposition. So basically there's things that you tear out of the building, throw in the dumpster I would call it dollars in the dumpster. So there's a value to what you tear out to and I can help you get that if you qualify. So when you look at buying a building to I mean, I work with CPAs, building owners, investors, bankers it's always beneficial because cost aggregation is going to give everyone definitive numbers on what your building's worth and, as a banker, a lot of them realize the value if you tell them you're having a cost-execute study because they want to make the loan to you to buy your building. However, they want to get paid back, right? So if they know you've done a cost-execute study and you've got cash flow, they know they're going to get paid at least first. Thank you first year, second year, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 9:11

Now with people when you look at cost aggregation, I have been getting a lot of questions recently about what's this bonus depreciation. So bonus depreciation kind of step back to before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Bonus at that time you had to have built something new and it had started at 100% and by 2017, it was down to 50%, meaning what that means is anything. We find that's under a 20 year life. You can accelerate and you can take full advantage of that money. The same tax year.

Speaker 2: 9:54

Now what happened in 2017, september 28th? They said if you bought a building or built a building, anybody can get 100% bonus. They are now trying to play it out. So by 2026, they're saying that there will be no bonus. Right now we're at 80% bonus in tax year 2023. You don't ever lose any benefits. I don't want anyone to get worried about. Oh, I didn't buy a building in 2022, so I'm not getting 100% bonus. It just means that you can't use all of the money the very first year. It would be spread out over the next five years, but you never lose benefit.

Speaker 1: 10:36

So just to talk through some of these things, you and I had talked about this previously. The hard thing here for people to understand is to help quantify the benefit of what a potential cost segregation study can do. Because we have deal calculators we can calculate here's my projected cash flow, here's my projected appreciation and here's my projected returns. And sometimes we kind of get lost in this middle ground of how do we project what our tax savings might be.

Speaker 1: 11:06

But understanding this is very significant right. And so if you're buying a building of a decent size, there's a big savings here, a big potential cash flow savings because of taking advantage of this cost segregation study. And so I think a lot of times people feel like, oh, I just don't know enough about that or I don't want to take the steps to look into this further because it's taxes and what the heck is this and I don't understand it. So I'm just not going to do it. And really understanding there's a powerful tool here to help you in your investment journey and, like you said, unlock a lot of potential cash that you can then use either to pay down the mortgage, go find another building, and so figuring this out or spending some time studying cost segregation can have an incredible value for an investor.

Speaker 2: 11:53

Oh, absolutely, and I try to make it as easy as possible for people. So we will do like a free analysis that somebody would be interested in and we'll tell you what we believe we're going to get out of your building. And we hit our numbers 90% of the time. We're above we'd rather over deliver. So I say I'm getting you 50,000 of tax benefit. I might come in at 60,000, you don't ever pay me anything more. So within 48 hours I can have some numbers back to you and let you know what the cost of the study will be, which we actually were in expense to you, to say you get to write this off and then what your tax benefit is going to be. And this is huge. Like you mentioned, I mean you have investors here and a couple that you and I both know that we just were kind of discussing. I mean it's been super fun to watch them. They have bought and then they've taken that cash flow that they had and they've invested again and they just keep cost saving these buildings and keep building their portfolio. So there's really, I can tell you, as far as cost segregation, what would I want to know, like, what's the negative? Why would somebody want to do it. Because if you don't pay taxes, like you're a nonprofit, or you just don't ever pay in taxes there's probably not going to be a benefit to you. Or if you're a flipper I know you probably have people that listen to this Unfortunately there's not enough time for you to take your money to make more money if you're flippie. The IRS kind of stands on it is that if you hold something at least two years or more, tax cost segregation can be beneficial, should be beneficial for you.

Speaker 2: 13:42

You also mentioned the dollar amount. Some people think they have to have at least a million dollar building. We can go, if it's a new buy, down to like 140, 150, for there still to be tax benefit for the cost that's to outweigh the cost of the study. So you know, if people I like to give two analogies that people kind of like. So one of them is think of it like the lottery Mike, you just want a million dollars in the lottery and I said do you want a little bit of money for 39 years to Marshall or 27 and a half years would be residential or do you want it to get a whole bunch of it right now, when you want it right now, because it's time, value, money, right, and you want to get a million dollars worth more today, you know tomorrow, so we don't get people more depreciation. Just want to make that really clear at the end of the life of your building, it's going to be the same amount.

Speaker 2: 14:40

Now, this is a little quote that I, like my little 86-year-old guy who's such a great investor. He, though, said at the beginning, when he started this with me, he said so, let me get this straight, jody, if I don't do this and I die next year, I've never got to use my money Like, yeah, that's pretty much it, so we're just top loading it. So you get to you're your, you're your own interest free loan, instead of it going to the IRS, you're giving it to yourself. And most people like when I say that. They're like yeah, well, I think I know what to do with my money better than what the IRS says, so you know. Kind of being in charge. Like you said, you don't know what you don't know, but you want to be in charge of your life and your portfolio, to be able to say can I take advantage of this 20,000, 200,000, $2 million, and what can I do with it? Um, so that you know.

Speaker 2: 15:39

And when people look at you know, hearing people, oh they did pay taxes I can tell you probably 98% of they own a building they're probably doing cost segregation. So, um, I will bring up too. If you've owned a building more than a year, you know people can't get a little confused on this too. They're like oh well, I've been straight lining it, what do I do? I don't want to amend, you don't have to amend. When you do a cost segregation study, what we'll provide for you in your, your tax professional is what's called a 3115 form, and that form just clearly tells the IRS that you're switching from straight line to accelerated. So there's not a mending. And because I know a lot of times people are like whoa, I don't want to amend. Um, so that that's a nice thing. And if, obviously, if you just bought a building, you know today you would just start out with accelerated appreciation. So talk about the process and how it works.

Speaker 1: 16:37

So you'd mentioned this before. You know you guys do kind of a free analysis for people's talked about property up to you know, 150,000. $150,000 or more. Often you can find enough benefit there to offset the cost, um, so if I'm interested in looking more into this, um, you guys provide uh kind of a free study. So what, what do I need to send to you or how does that work, to kind of get that free analysis to know if it's going to make sense or not?

Speaker 2: 17:03

Yep. So what I would probably say is, if you've owned the building more than a year, I would want your depreciation schedule and then, if you've done any major improvements in 2023, that wouldn't be on the schedule yet you'd let me know that. Um, if you just purchased a building, you would send me the closing settlement statement and then I would ask was there a 1031 exchange involved or was there any major improvements you're going to be doing this year? When I get those answered, um, then we like the address and what's the use of the building typical, I'll ask also, um how many square feet it is? Um, you know, because of 50,000 square foot buildings, it'd be different than 5,000 square foot buildings. Um, and then within 48 hours we'll come back with the analysis. If you like the numbers, um, we do, uh, ask if you have appraisal and or blueprint.

Speaker 2: 17:54

We are engineered base, so that's what the IRS prefers. And so when the IRS says they prefer something, typically what you want to do? Um, we actually physically come to the location of the property. We take pictures of the whole outside and inside. If it would be a hotel or a multifamily living, um, we do need to get into one of each type of unit and then all of the common areas, and our studies take like six, eight weeks. We do get paid, um, half up front and then half when our study is completed.

Speaker 2: 18:32

And I know people some you know want to know pricing a lot Like you know what. What are we looking at? You know how much expensive. We don't, we don't have a set fee, it's really what the building's used up. But I'll I'll give you kind of an example. Let's say you have a a million dollar office building and then you have a million dollar warehouse, both bought the same year, same month. Um, so there's going to be more stuff, more assets in the office building, and so you know that's probably going to give you, let's say, you know, the $80,000 tax benefit and the cost of the studies probably going to be somewhere between you know, don't quote me here, I don't set the fees, but I've been doing this a long time, somewhere probably between 4,800 and 5,800, something like that. No, the warehouse is not going to have as much stuff in it but that's probably only going to give us maybe a $45,000 tax benefit. But the cost of the study because there's not much stuff for us to look at it's probably going to be, you know, between the 3,800 to 4,800 type of price range, you know, and it kind of varies a little bit too, like I said, how big it is. If it's now 120,000 square foot when health is probably going to be a little bit more, thought of building was going to be more, little less.

Speaker 2: 19:53

I will bring up right now that's been really popular on the last of COVID. Actually it's really taken. Strides is the Airbnb. A lot of people are into those right now and those are those are really, you know, been very beneficial for a lot of people. Especially if you're running your own and doing a lot of the work yourself, you can actually use that towards your active income. Well, that can be very beneficial too.

Speaker 1: 20:21

Yeah. And then, understanding, you know the, the money that you're gonna pump into the study here, you're gonna recoup that and much more on the back end. And so, understanding, yeah, there's an investment that happens to get this study done. And yet, like you said, you would only do this study if it makes sense for you financially. And so it's like, yeah, it's not like I'm gonna, I'm gonna pay you this money. And then you come back and you're like, oops, sorry, you already know ballpark, what, what is it gonna be that the advantage here? And then, yeah, if the numbers make sense, it's like, okay, let's move forward with this study. You get this study and have it done and, like you said, ideally it's gonna be more than what you had anticipated. And then, happy day, great, we have a bigger savings than what we thought, and so that is the thing there's. There's really not a lose scenario here, because You're already gonna look at the cost benefit here.

Speaker 2: 21:07

You also get to expensive.

Speaker 2: 21:09

So exactly you know what there, yeah, so there's, there's, there's really like most live people say you know it's a no-brainer. I mean, why would you not want your money now, I mean again in If you're looking at buying. I always think it's kind of funny, though I have some guys that you know, they know they're gonna sell any year and they still do it because they feel like they can take their money and Make more money, and that kind of scenario. That would be something I would definitely tell you talk to your tax professional about. But also, let's say, you cost-a-good and somebody comes and offers you you know Ten times what your buildings worth.

Speaker 2: 21:52

You would probably be like number one am I sitting on gold that I messed? Or number two, do I really care that I paid Jody five grand? I just made you know five hundred thousand or whatever. So you know, and we do use a combined Fed and state tax rate to do your, to figure out what your your tax. You know benefits going to be. Obviously you know South Dakota, or you know States that don't have Florida, that don't have state tax. It would be just the federal. But I mean, we do, I, I do, I probably have clients in 42 states now and it's it just works for people everywhere when they, when they start doing this and you know your investors you probably will never stop.

Speaker 2: 22:42

I mean it's just a repeat, repeat, repeat type of Situation like you said, kind of a no-brainer here.

Speaker 1: 22:48

When you start to see like, oh gosh, I can really experience this benefit here and yeah, you, you see it show up and and it provides more cash flow in that short term, it is kind of a no-brainer. Real estate agents, are you tired of letting the busyness of life get in your way from achieving your real estate investing goals? I'm super excited to announce we've created the real freedom investor agent tribe. It's a place for you to come, get educated and network with others so that you can make sure that you're hitting your real estate investment goals. So find out more on our website, realfreedomcom. Click on the store link. We've got a membership. We've got a mastermind group and some private coaching as well. Check it out. I've priced it super low. The goal is to get you and not have price be a determining factor To keep you from your goals. So come check it out, schedule a call with me and we're happy to see where your real estate journey is gonna take you.

Speaker 2: 23:37

Well, you might have some investors to that own with. You know, maybe there's three of them or five of them or whatever. So the benefit you just, depending on your ownership, it just gets divided out that way how you know if you're 2020, 2020, and so it's still very beneficial. You know, because there's multi investors, the one thing that there's also more benefit and it's probably I don't want to go down in the weeds, but that's all in your favor that's called tangible property regulations. So, basically, when you've done a cost segregation study, the main thing I would tell you, if you ever have anything done on your building after that, you'd want the contractor to break out what they're doing to three very important things, and that's tearouts, disposal and replacement, and once we get those things, you can you can expense a lot more different things than you would have been able before.

Speaker 2: 24:37

The other thing I would tell people to is, once you've done a cost segregation study with CSSI, but you might want to talk to your insurance carrier. I've had a lot of clients that have gotten lower premium. You know the reason being it. There's really no going back and forth about what's worth what, because it's all Engineer calculated numbers. I mean, we're not aggressive. We're not passive work.

Speaker 1: 25:08

It is what it is you know your windows are worth this.

Speaker 2: 25:10

Your roof's worth this, your floor and was worth this. You know, god forbid a fire. That's the easiest example that that people find. So you know there's, there's, there's really a Good way to get things done. You do want to have them done right. You know people oh, audit. I just had a thought here People, oh, is this going to? You know, give me audited, is this? You know, it's actually a little bit the opposite.

Speaker 2: 25:40

We've done 40,000 studies. We've never triggered an audit. We have been involved in like 17 audits like they were audited for they payroll and they've seen we did their cost. They say we're in and we're out. You're audit, defended. It doesn't cost the client anything. It's right in our agreement and I mean obviously we've been around a long time and we've done a lot of these. So we do things right and you do want that. Probably. People have heard you know the IRS. They're talking about getting like 83,000 or whatever, more IRS agents. I don't know if they're going to be able to do that or not, but if they do, I mean your rest assured, you're in good hands and you want to do things correctly.

Speaker 1: 26:23

Yeah, absolutely. So we kind of talked through the basics here of why would we want to do it, what's going to be the benefit, when wouldn't it make sense, which is very rarely what would be kind of the next steps? You know you had mentioned that free analysis. So if somebody is like hey, jody, I want to learn more, now I want to reach out to you. And, yeah, some of these concepts I don't, I can't quite wrap my brain around them, I don't understand them yet. And yet the good news is we don't have to fully understand them, but talking with you will really help. So how can they reach out to you to get more information?

Speaker 2: 26:54

Well, thanks, mike. Yeah, and I like to be. I'm about relationships and I like to be more of a consultant for people because you know, I want you to understand, because what you need to understand and I try not to go down the weeds at all anybody, but you have to have a good trust and hopefully I bring that to people. I think I do. I can my phone number and Jody Jodi Nielsen, n-i-e-l-f-e-n, and I'm at 651-210-1921. And then my email is long, so I'm going to say it and then spell it it's jodynielsen at costsegregationservicescom. So it's jodinielsen at costcostsegregation, s-e-g-r-e-g-a-t-i-o-n-s-e-r-v-i-c-e-scom, cost segregation services. And then my website is wwwsuperiorcostsegregationcom.

Speaker 1: 28:13

Awesome. Thank you, jodi, for coming on, thank you for sharing, and it's a topic where, if I hadn't heard about it before, it's going to take a little bit of time to get my brainwrap drawn in, but at the same time, you make it so easy and you help us out and, like I said, really you're only moving forward if it makes sense, and so it's a win-win situation. And so just certainly reach out to Jodi if you want to learn more.

Speaker 2: 28:32

Love to hear from y'all. Thank you.