Enter a rental property's purchase price, land value, and month placed in service to calculate its depreciation.

How to Use the Rental Property Depreciation Calculator

Enter the purchase price, the portion of that price attributable to the land (which isn't depreciable), and the month the property was placed in service as a rental. The calculator handles the rest, including the partial first year.

The IRS lets owners of residential rental property write off the building's cost — not the land under it — over a fixed 27.5-year schedule, straight-line, under MACRS's General Depreciation System. That period is set in Publication 527, not chosen calculator-to-calculator, so it isn't an editable input here the way a rate or fee elsewhere on this site would be.

The Formulas

Depreciable Basis = Purchase Price − Land Value
Annual Depreciation = Depreciable Basis ÷ 27.5
Monthly Depreciation = Annual Depreciation ÷ 12

On a $300,000 purchase with $60,000 of that in land, the depreciable basis is $240,000, which works out to roughly $8,727 a year and $727 a month.

Why the First Year Is Different

The IRS applies a mid-month convention to the year a property is placed in service — no matter which day of the month it happens, the property is treated as if it started halfway through that month. Place it in service in January, and there are effectively 11.5 months of depreciation left to claim for that first calendar year rather than a full 12.

First-Year Months = (12 − Month Placed in Service) + 0.5
First-Year Depreciation = Annual Depreciation × First-Year Months ÷ 12

With the January default, that's 11.5 months, bringing first-year depreciation to about $8,364 — a bit less than a full year's worth, and the gap grows the later in the year the property enters service. A property placed in service in December, by contrast, only gets a half-month of depreciation in its first year.

This is a planning estimate, not a tax filing tool. Depreciation recapture on sale, cost segregation, and any state-specific rules aren't modeled here. Confirm the current recovery period and your specific situation against IRS Publication 527 or a tax professional before filing.