The Untold Solutions We Overlook with Jeff Hiatt
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This is Wake Up To Wealth, a podcast dedicated to helping you change the way you think about wealth. And now, here's your host, Brandon Brittingham.

Hey, what's up, everybody? We are back with another episode of Wake Up To Wealth. And I've got a gentleman in the studio that I met recently in the boardroom mastermind. And he's got his friend here with us, Thor. You might catch glimpses of him on the podcast. Jeff Hyatt, thanks for coming here today. Brandon, thank you very much for having me. I'm thrilled to be down here with you today.

So the cool thing, uh, one of the things we're going to talk about today, right, is probably one of the most misunderstood and just a ton of misinformation out there. And you guys know that if you follow me on social media, if you listen to the podcast, uh, I bring people on here that teach you ways to become more wealthy. And one of the biggest things is I actually had this conversation with somebody yesterday, um,

that started coaching with me and, and we were talking about how much money he made last year. And I said, that's not how much money you made. And he's like, what are you, he got offended. What do you mean? I said, well, you made that minus 48% for state and federal taxes. And he said, oh shit, you're right. And so one of the things we're going to talk about today is depreciation through real estate, specifically what you're an expert on, which is cost segregation, right? That's correct. Yeah.

And so it's so crazy to me, the amount of misinformation, wrong information, bad advice people get on this subject. So I'm excited to have you because this is the shit that people need to hear. Right. And the right information. So like just, um,

Someone, probably most people, even that are listening to this show, they don't even understand, like explain depreciation. And then behind that, if you wouldn't mind, explain cost segregation so people understand it. Absolutely. Thank you very much for asking. Those are great, great lead in to the conversation here today.

So, and just a little bit of background on myself, just to put it out there. We've been the firm I'm with MSC, MS Consultants. We've been doing cost segregation studies since 96. I joined the firm in 99. We have at this point, 10 accountant types and 17 engineer types who do the work. We're all internal.

We've done about in total, about 24,000 studies plus or minus since back in the day. With that said, we have some experience here. And if you don't do anything, when you buy a property, whether it's a,

a restaurant building, industrial building, any kind of building out there, you're going to have 39 year depreciation. When, what does that mean? Meaning, and let me just finish up one other thing. If it's a residential rental, apartment rental, then it's 27 and a half. So I got that out there. Same with single family? Same with single family. Renting it out, 27 and a half year. So that means that the IRS,

will allow you to take a deduction against earnings when you've bought, let's say you bought the building for a million dollars, just so it's round. And we have to take out 20% for land, land being non-depreciable. So now we're at 800 grand. And so you're at 800 grand and the IRS will allow you to deduct

the 800 grand divided by 39 or 27 and a half years. And that becomes your depreciation deduction against income from that property. Got it. So that's what it is to start. And many times people have done that for years and years and years, or they just bought it this year and they're thinking they're going to only have that option. Right.

But if they hear about it, cost segregation, and I ask them, if I said to you, Brandon, hey, I know you're going to you were talking about depreciating the building over thirty nine or twenty seven and a half. Would you rather wait thirty nine years for a deduction or would you rather take a deduction today?

Most people are going to say, gosh, I'd rather grab it now versus waiting. I don't know if I'll be alive in 39 years or 27 and a half. Don't know if I'm on the building. Don't know what the tax code is going to be.

If I can get some of it today, then I'll take it today. And so that's what we help people do is accelerate the depreciation deductions on their buildings because the IRS will also, if it's properly identified, allow you to take items over five or seven or 15 years versus 39 or 27 and a half. Got it. So like, um,

You know, you buy a building. So like what the HVAC or like, well, how does that work where you get some some accelerated depreciation on some of the items? So the IRS says a building to be a building has to have certain things. Right. OK. And so those things are the walls, the windows, the doors, the roof.

the HVAC, plumbing for a bathroom, any electrical for lighting. Those are the structural components or the 39 or 27 and a half year items. The items that are not in that category are basically from when you drive onto the property

So you're coming off the public road and now you've entered your property just like coming here. Yeah. So there's parking lot, there's compacted gravel underneath the asphalt, there's striping on the parking lot, there's fences, there's walking grass areas for dogs, there's fencing, there's ramps, there's all kinds of stuff outside of the building to the property line, 15 year category, whether you're talking apartment or property.

the other categories, right? Nine year. Then you get inside of the building and you've got things that are not, and this is a layman's term here. So it's not exactly correct, but anything that's facade gets to go into a faster life. So for instance, the trim on the, uh,

on the walls or the engineered flooring or the nice wood backdrops. Anything that is not structural get for the most part gets to be in that faster life under five years or seven years. Okay. All right. So you gave a great example of the 800 and this is bubble math. We're not holding you to it because we're doing this on the fly, but take the same scenario of that million dollar building and

what does that look like in a cost seg? And I know there's a thousand variables that go into this, but just for someone's listening. So they understand. All right. So we got this eight, we've got this million dollar building. We got 800. We can depreciate. If we do a cost seg, what does that look like? So that could, depending on, like you said, a number of variables, one of them being, well, it can be somewhere between 25%.

15 and 25% of that 800 of the 800. Got it. Okay. Go into a faster life. Right. And then you've got bonus depreciation in there too, which helps turbocharge what we're talking about. But with that said, typically the difference between a 15 year reallocation and a 25 year allocation is going to be the difference between an urban setting where

versus a suburban setting. And that really comes down to then mean, what is the 15-year property going to be? In a suburban setting, you've got more parking lot, walking trails, maybe in an apartment complex, or maybe a home, like a residential rental home might have a play yard area, might have fences, driveways, all that. Whereas if you're looking at an

A property in an urban setting where the building is kind of plopped down on the street with maybe a little sidewalk, they're not going to have an irrigation system. They're not going to have planting beds and shrubs and trees and mulch and things like that. So that's somewhat the differential.

Got it. So rough math and correct me if I'm wrong on this, cause I'm doing it on the fly, but let's just say we're using this for just an example. We get that million dollar building, 800,000 depreciation. Let's say we hit that 20% number. So that's 160,000 we can take in the year we buy it.

You can take in the year you bought it depending on when you bought it, because you can go back retroactive. I was going to ask you that next. So do you want me to cover that right now? Go ahead. Yeah. Okay. So if you bought it, technically you can go back to 86. So as a point, you could go back to when the tax law changed, which was the tax reform act of 86 took away investment tax credits and

And at that point, everything became straight line. So you can go back to then and fix it without amending your tax return. Wow. The reality is... I did not know that. Yes. Seats, Thor. Sorry. We got Thor's in the studio with us and he just walked off camera. Sorry about that. That's all good. Anyway, so...

So you can go back. He likes my cameraman. He does. He does. Hey, buddy. How you doing? So every Thursday is Thursday. That's right. And today is Thursday or Thursday. So you can go back without amending and fix the depreciation you could have taken but haven't yet taken. Seats.

So, you know, I didn't know that. Yeah, that's the first for me, because I actually had we had somebody in here yesterday who I was telling you about this gentleman off camera. And he's got nine property that he's owned for a while. And I said, what do you think they're worth? He said a million bucks.

And I just, I said, well, that's probably about 200 K was, you know, bubble math. Right. And so, so let's take this one step further. And again, correct me if I'm wrong. Cause I have a CFO. I don't, I don't do taxes. I don't do any of this shit. That's why I have people like you that are way smarter than me. So someone who the IRS and if I butcher this, correct me.

In real estate, from the way my CFO explains it to me, because I'm a real estate professional, I can take those losses against my active income. You can, yes. Okay, I got it right? Yeah, you're absolutely right. Okay, so for those of you who are out there listening to this, think about it. The example he just gave was...

we take that $160,000. I can then use that loss against my active income that year. Am I saying that right? You're right. As long as you're a real estate professional. As long as you're a real estate professional. Right. And that is something that you got to figure out with somebody that's smarter than me because we are not CPAs. But most of the, a lot of people that listen to the show, probably real estate professionals, your investors, you're on the agent side, whatever the case is.

But this is why wealthy people do this. Yes. Oh, yes. I mean, it is a great way to accelerate your wealth accumulation, too, because what it allows you to do is grab that money that would have been sent to Washington, D.C. And most people say they would rather control the dough. And they're going to blow it, by the way. Yes, you're right. So as opposed to sending it there, they get to retain it. And that's what they get to do then. They can take that money.

deduction of 160K and go and use that tax benefit, that tax savings to go buy another property more quickly or improve their current properties without having to borrow money. So now they can fix up their properties. Guess what they can do then? Increase the rent because now it's a better value property. They can probably...

as part of the BRRRR conversation, refinance it now with a higher value, and then they get to redo the whole thing again. So that allows them, again, to just go ahead and accelerate their wealth accumulation and retention.

So why do you think there is, so I run into this all the time and you and I sat in a room with a bunch of really smart real estate investors. And I would, if we pulled that room, when you got done talking, I would bet 60% of the people in the room had no idea about this. Right. Um,

why do you think there's so much misinformation or misunderstanding? I mean, I know taxes are complicated, but like, this is a big deal and people don't under, they don't know this or they don't understand it. And then a lot of times I, you guys that follow me know, I coach a lot of people and teach them how to run a real estate investment business like we do. And we're in a, Jeff and I are in a mastermind that's for real estate investors and

And a lot of times what I hear is like, well, I talked to a professional accountant or whoever, not all accounts are bad. That's not what I'm saying, but they tell them not to do it. Or they tell them a price that's outrageous, that it doesn't make sense to do it. It's like, there's no across the board. Like it's just so misunderstood and so many misconceptions. Yeah.

You're absolutely right on all of that. So our firm is part of and some of our tax professionals are part of a group called the ASCSP, which is the American Society of Cost Segregation Professionals. So within that group, there's a lot of research that is done. It's the overarching approach.

within the cost seg space. And it's estimated that about 30% of the people that could have taken advantage of cost seg have done it. In other words, 70% have not. And the IRS isn't showing up saying, hey, it's just

Typically, no, they don't go, hey, you should be doing a cost seg. Yeah, you got a bunch of money sitting in your properties that you don't have to pay us. That's correct. That's not the typical conversation with the IRS. So with that said, what ends up happening is they talk, maybe they talk to an accountant and the accountant goes, well, you're going to get the depreciation anyway. Why bother hiring a cost seg company? Yeah. Because it's the same amount. We're not giving more depreciation.

But to my earlier comment, if you'd rather have the deduction today than 39 years from now, why not grab it now? 100%. It's the same amount. Yeah. Let's just take some of it now. And to your point, the things you mentioned earlier, the tax code could change.

I mean, we don't know. You don't know what tomorrow is going to bring you. So I'd rather put the money in my pocket today. Correct. And redeploy it. Correct. So what ends up happening is sometimes the accountants don't quite understand it themselves. Yeah. We have many of our referrals come in from accounting firms that specialize in real estate focused clients. Yeah.

There are those who are not focused on real estate. And sometimes it's been that that client has grown and become more into the real estate than that incumbent accounting firm can deal with. That's a good point. Yeah. And so now they've got 10 buildings and they're no longer just the attorney or no longer just the the contractor guy.

they've got 10 properties. They should be talking probably to somebody that knows more about real estate who would then steer them on the right path. But with that said,

All is not lost because you can step back, grab the depreciation, no amended return. There's a form called a 3115, which is a complicated form. And another reason many accounting firms that are not familiar with it kind of steer away from it. There's a lot of data points on that form. And if they're filled out incorrectly, it can trigger an audit.

So we always complete the 3115 for the client, for their accounting firm so that it's done correctly. And of our 24,000 studies, we've probably done about 8,000 3115s through the years. So we have the ability to help the client stay on the right path there.

Yeah.

And what that value is, is let's say on your $800,000 building, let's say we said there was 50 grand we attributed to HVAC. And you say, okay, so what? It's in 27 and a half or 39 year life. It is what it is. But the deal is we identify that many of our competitors don't do that. They don't put in that value and they just say, well, it's your 27 and a half years is, you know, 640,000.

Well, the beauty of our report is that you can step back when you replace the HVAC because in fact it doesn't last 39 years. You have a big chunk of that still on the depreciation schedule, even though that HVAC went in a dumpster. Yeah. Well, you get to take that deduction now because we've got that information for you. So you can reuse our report multiple times.

to the point where we also have a thing we call the iron silo of depreciation for our clients. And what that does is hold all of your depreciation information at hand so that you or your accountant can get to it anytime you want in the future.

As you do those renovations. So you don't have to necessarily call me, although feel free to. But bottom line is you've got that access to get in and you can see, oh, what was the value of that roof? We just replaced the roof or all the windows. We got rid of the single pane, put in double pane or the siding. So when you do an upgrade on a building, you're able to take those abandonment losses away.

in the future as you do renovations. Yeah, you said something. I'd never heard that either. You had mentioned that at boardroom. So I'm glad you brought that up because I'd never heard that either. That was news to me. Well, and again, all of these little points along the way make cost seg even more

more valuable for your clients or your friends and your colleagues out there and the listeners is that as time progresses, they are going to be doing renovations. Right. And the key is, you know, to make sure you're staying within the tax code. But within that tax code, there's plenty of bandwidth and width for you to take advantage of the way the laws are written now.

Um, and so that's what we help people do. And we've been doing it for years and years. So if anybody, if you're listening to this, um, hopefully you have the intelligence on this next question to put this together. But, um, what I've also heard, or I had a client recently, we've managed 30 properties for them. And he said, I'm going to, I'm going to go, um, on the internet and download the form and do it myself. Yeah.

i'm there or i'm there's a diy program that cost me 400 bucks why should someone not do that

So the IRS, interestingly enough, has to communicate to their auditor folks in the field. And so they have this document called an audit techniques guide. It's how they, the IRS, you know, big IRS communicates to the folks in the field. And this is what they say to do. And within that audit techniques guide, there are things that the IRS says must be present

to be considered a viable cost segregation study. And those are an actual site visit. You can't just wing it. You can't do DIY. You can't have some photographer guy that you're paying 25 bucks come in and take photos of the place because they're not considered authoritative with

within the tax code. So with that said, you need to have an actual site visit. You need to have it done by qualified professionals. And the way to fix things in the future is with that 3115 not amending. But the reason you shouldn't do that is because what will happen is an audit wouldn't happen the minute you file that particular return. It's probably going to be

possibly two or three years later. Well, two or three years later, guess what's happened? If they disallow that deduction for you,

you're going to have penalties and interest that have been compounded for two or three years, plus the tax. And the interest rate the IRS charges is not a friendly interest rate. It's punitive. And you don't want that. So most people find when they look at cost seg, and when they, especially with our work, is that if they spend a dollar to have the study done,

and they save themselves four or $5 in taxes, they'll say, hey, that's a good deal. Let's do it. We hit that threshold at about 350 to 400,000. So if the client has spent 350 or 400,000 to buy a building, to build a building or to renovate a building. That's their basis total. That's their basis total potentially. Then we're going to be over that hurdle and they're going to get four or five to one.

return investment. Got it. I was going to ask you costs that kind of explained it. Yeah. And so what we, because we've, when we first started doing this and keep in mind, I just said it was 350 to 400 now. Right. But back in the day when we started, we would have said, Hey, Brandon, you need to

be at a million dollars basis. Right. Otherwise, it's not going to make sense. Well, that was a long time ago. We've got more team now. We've got a database and we can pull that information in. We can give you an estimate of tax benefit before you spend a nickel. Right.

So you'll know roughly what you're going to save in taxes and what our fixed fee is going to be. Right. So you don't have to go into it blind. Right. You can make a decision. Yeah. We always estimate conservatively because, again, we don't want to have you adjust your estimated payments down and then have penalties and interest if necessary.

They were wrong. So we'd rather come back and say, Brandon, Hey, we said we were going to save you a hundred grand of income tax. Hey, we saved you 150 or 200, or we said a million. Now it's a million and a half. Okay, great. So that's our typical approach. Yeah. So, I mean, in your opinion, I mean, you kind of just answered it on the basis, but I mean, don't you think your average real estate investor, even if you're brand new, you

your asset value is going to be higher than that. Like, you know what I mean? You're not, you're going to have more than one property in most cases. You know, if you're an active investor, you're going to have several, right? And you're going to get into the millions of inequity or, you know, value of the property. I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong, once you meet that threshold of asset value, doesn't it make sense to always do it?

Pretty much. That's a great question and point. On the East Coast, the West Coast, for

For the most part, I somewhat jokingly say you can't dig a hole for a building for three or 400 grand. Right. You know, you're going to be just by the time you get to that point, you're there. So like you said, almost everything will make sense. There are some times it doesn't make sense. So since we're talking about it, let's I'll go into that. If you're not if your client or friend or a listener is not paying income tax now,

Cost seg doesn't make sense because we only help you offset taxes. And if you're, if you've got NOLs or something, that's an offset. Yeah. Then you don't need us. If you're going to buy and flip, which some of your listeners for sure, they're your, your audience, this won't work for buying flips, but if you're going to buy the property and hold it for at least a

three years to five years, you're going to get over that hurdle because either way you go with either not cost seg or cost seg, you're going to have recapture. Right. So you have to give back so much more in the short term on a two or three year hold that cost seg probably won't make sense if you're only going to hold it that long and, and, and

and in capital letters there. And you're not going to do a 1031. Right. If you said, hey, I am going to buy it. I am going to hold it for three years and I'm going to then 1031 it, which many of your listeners as well will be doing. So now 1031 is in play and you're going to buy the next property and it will make sense to do then typically if you're over that first threshold and then you go to the 1031 acquired property and you can grab the deductions out of that

to the extent there's new basis there. - Yeah, no, it makes a ton of sense. You know, it's funny, I had this conversation with somebody the other day, and we were talking about the end of last year, we bought a portfolio of properties, cashflow was decent, not anything crazy, and they said,

you know, Hey, why'd you buy that property? You know, the cashflow was okay. It penciled. Right. But it wasn't great. And I said, the tax savings alone, my cashflow will never reach it. Right. So the tax savings that I got last year on buying that portfolio in my life of owning that prop, that,

that portfolio until it's paid off. I probably will never get what I got back in the tax savings. That's the shit that people don't understand. Yeah. It's what you keep. It is the whole game is, it's not what, what do you show? It's what do you get to keep at the end of the day?

And with that said, you can grab that deduction now and then it'll it'll play for you along the way. Plus, as you do renovations in the future using the iron silo, you get back to that depreciation information for future abandonment losses. Life is good.

Yeah. I mean, so just to give rough math, cause I love to give people examples. We bought, it was about a 4 million in some change. Um, and I think we hit about 25% on the cost seg. So you can do the math on that. Right. Um, it was, it was, uh, it was a seven figure write-off.

on our taxes. That's what I mean. It'll take that portfolio a long time to net me seven figures. That's exactly it. But if it, it saves you in other buckets that you would have been paying out of, and I can now take that money, um, that we would have been able, you know, we would, we would have been on the hook for, uh, cause we, we made money last year and I can take and redeploy it into other assets. Do you know what I mean? Get a return on that money. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Is there anything else that you think people need to know or understand about the subject we haven't talked about? You know, it's one of those scenarios. We've done so many. We, I think last year did projects in 43 or 44 states. Yeah. I don't remember the exact.

number. But we go all over the country. So if they were interested, they could, you know, just give a simple, basically it's a seven or eight question response to, you know, what's the street address. So we can initially take the initial glance at it without having to go there right off the bat. But, you know, square footage, what kind of building is it? You know, is it

10, is it a 10 tenant retail plaza or is it a 10 unit apartment building? And so we give basic questions. They'll typically know them right off the top of their head. We can give that estimate and then they can make a decision as to whether to proceed or no.

Yeah. And just so you guys know, I mean, you guys know how I feel about you guys as listeners and who I allow on the show and who I allow sponsor the show. So Jeff and his company actually have recently become a sponsor. So these are, these are people that we trust.

that if you guys need help in this arena, that we feel confident that you can go to use them. So you'll hear them on the show in commercials. You'll hear them and hear us talking about them. So you guys will get access to all their information, all their contact information. I highly suggest you guys use them.

I highly suggest you use this and leverage this as a tool. It is so surprising to me how many people still don't use this and don't know about and don't understand it. Well, we've talked about a lot of the reasons why, but now you guys, you have a resource, you have a resource here and it's somebody that we trust. I want to switch gears for a minute before we wrap up, just because I think it's important.

If you wouldn't mind, would you talk a little bit about what you guys shared at Boardroom, the organization that you're involved in? Because I think that's really, really cool. And I'd love for you to touch on that a little bit. Absolutely. I'd be happy to. So I never served in the military myself. And right after 9-11 happened, I realized, oh my gosh, I should do something. But I had two little girls at the time. My business was just launching. I really couldn't pull

away. And I was just beyond the age to be able to enlist anyway. So I had some headwinds there. So about 2010, I got involved with a military group to help, you know, support veterans and their families and started with that one group.

did another group, and now I'm with Swim With a Mission. And I've been on that board for now since 2017. So I guess in the math, that's about seven years. And so we've raised about $13 million for veterans and their families providing support

helping them through tough times. There's 22 suicides a day from folks that have been overseas and downrange and providing protection for our way of doing business here in the U.S. And there's a lot of...

Folks that could use help and service. And that's what we do with Swim With A Mission. So what we do is support veterans and their families with service dogs, some dogs.

Equine Immersion, which is a horse therapy program, art therapy, substance abuse. So we try to raise money for these veterans when the government agencies have typically not been able to do that. And we provide support and help them. And it's been a great group. We do a lot of work with the Navy SEALs. So we support the Navy SEAL Museum, which is in Fort Pierce, Florida, where the Navy SEALs started back in 1941.

and provide them a lot of support in their charities, Trident House, and a few other, their college support for veterans, kids that are lost. And it's been a great group. We do a lot of work throughout the Northeast and have really had a lot of fun doing it.

And you got to meet a few of the seal guys. Yeah, yeah. That was really cool. Yeah, yeah. And is that how you got Thor? Well, Thor is my own dog. Yeah. And every Thursday is Thor's day. Yeah. But he is like one of the service dogs we would provide. Yeah. So we provide the vets.

that are used to using and working with big dogs. Yeah. We provide them service dogs like they would have had in combat. Got it. They used to. That's really cool. And it's been a lot of fun. We've given away a lot of dogs through the years with all that money. Yeah, that's awesome. I end the show every time the same way. Number one, wealth of knowledge. Thank you.

Because if there's a bunch of people that just listen to this, that you've just saved them a shit ton of money for sure. Right. And again, use them and their company because there's bad information, bad actors, bad players out there. And you can be taken advantage of when it comes to this because people don't understand it. So that's one of the reasons I really wanted to have him on here today because I

it's rare that we get somebody in your field that number one wants to get on camera or get on a show. And then two actually knows what the hell they're talking about and is not going to take advantage of people. So I appreciate you for coming on here and doing that and being a sponsor of our show that many listeners can now reach out to you guys and use you. But I always end the same way.

We call this show Waking Up to Wealth because I grew up very poor. And from an education standpoint, I felt like I was never taught about money the right way. So we here believe in teaching people the actual keys to unlocking wealth. And I ask everybody the same question. What does waking up to wealth mean to you? Doesn't have to be money. Doesn't have to mean anything. It's just what your version of it is.

So that's a great question. And I love the title of your podcast. And it's, it's the podcast is not named waking up wealthy. Yeah. It's waking up to wealth and how do you become wealthy? Right. And like you said, that can be a number of different things to different people. In my view, how you end up getting down that path of, of waking up to wealth is to

Take ownership. Don't be a victim. Don't allow where you were in the past to be where you are in the future. Take ownership of it and run with it. And whatever the challenges you have are, you know, get over them and move on and figure out a way around it. So that's one thing. And then come at your interactions in the world differently.

from abundance. And if you can help somebody else get to their next level, then do that. I had that situation for me with some CPAs initially who connected me into their clients and they helped me get to the next level. It didn't do anything for them per se, but it helped me. And so I try to pay that forward to folks that I'm interacting with that could use

you know, getting to their next level, whatever that is. If I can make a connection, I make a connection. So that's what I would say. Waking up to wealth is in my world. Awesome, man. Listen, dude, I truly appreciate you coming into the studio. Everybody that knows me, I got $10. I'm a dog lover. So I appreciate the fact that you brought your dog today.

I thank you so much for being a guest of the show and giving the audience great information and pouring into us today. Hey, thank you very much for having me, Brandon. I'm thrilled to be here and appreciate everything you're doing and look forward to seeing you at the Boardroom Mastermind.

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Wake Up to Wealth. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way we'll get updates as new episodes become available. And if you feel so inclined, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends about the show. It is how new people find us. Until next time.