REAL ESTATE STRATEGY • CALIFORNIA

REAL ESTATE CPA SERVICES FOR CALIFORNIA INVESTORS

Real estate tax law rewards precision and punishes generalists. Cost segregation, 1031 exchanges, REPS, entity structuring — each has rules that shift the moment your portfolio does. Most CPAs treat rental property as a line item on a return. We treat it as the strategy.

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ABOUT THIS PRACTICE AREA

A SPECIALIST, NOT A GENERALIST.

I'm Gabe Velez, CPA, EA, co-founding partner at Tehrani + Velez. With over 15 years working with real estate investors across California — buy-and-hold owners, high-income professionals using REPS, and syndicators managing multi-property portfolios.

Two things make this practice different from a specialized real estate CPA firm you'd find running paid ads in every major metro.

Dual credential: CPA and Enrolled Agent means both the technical accounting depth and the IRS representation authority sit under one roof.

Integration: the same team that plans your strategy also prepares your return and manages your books. Nothing gets lost in a handoff between three different firms who've never spoken to each other.

WHO THIS IS FOR

THREE TYPES OF INVESTORS
WE WORK WITH

Buy-and-hold rental owners (1–10 doors).

You're building wealth through rental income and appreciation, and you want a CPA who understands depreciation, passive activity rules, and Schedule E - not one who's guessing.

High-income earners using REPS or the short-term rental loophole.

You have significant W-2 or business income and rental real estate, and you want to know whether real estate professional status or the STR loophole applies to your situation - and how to substantiate it if it does.

Larger portfolio investors and syndicators.

You're structuring multiple entities, receiving K-1s from syndications, or evaluating 1031s and DST exchanges at a scale where a mistake costs real money.

CORE TAX STRATEGIES

COST SEGREGATION STUDIES

A cost segregation study reclassifies parts of your property to accelerate depreciation and free up cash now instead of over 27.5 or 39 years. Instead of depreciating an entire building on one long schedule, a cost seg study breaks out components - flooring, fixtures, land improvements - into shorter recovery periods, some as short as five or seven years. Combined with bonus depreciation, this can generate a substantial paper loss in the year the study is completed. We've run this analysis on our own commercial property, not just clients' — we know the mechanics from both sides of the transaction.

INCLUDING REVERSE + DST EXCHANGES

1031 EXCHANGES

A 1031 exchange lets you defer capital gains tax by reinvesting sale proceeds into a like-kind property - but the deadlines are unforgiving and the structuring options matter. You have 45 days to identify a replacement property and 180 days to close. Reverse exchanges flip that order when you need to buy before you sell. DST (Delaware Statutory Trust) exchanges give portfolio investors a passive, fractional-ownership path into 1031-eligible real estate without landlord duties. Getting the structure wrong - or missing a deadline - turns a deferral into a taxable event.

SMART STRUCTURES.
STRICT DEADLINES.

REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONAL STATUS REP & THE SHORT-TERM RENTAL LOOPHOLE

REPS and the STR loophole are two different paths to the same outcome: turning rental losses from passive to non-passive, so they can offset your other income. REPS requires 750+ hours and more than half of your working time in real property trades - a high bar, usually relevant to a non-working spouse or someone who's left W-2 employment. The STR loophole works differently: average guest stays under seven days plus material participation, no 750-hour test required. Both require contemporaneous, defensible time logs. The strategy is only as strong as the documentation behind it.

ENTITY STRUCTURING FOR MULTI-PROPERTY PORTFOLIOS

How you title and hold each property affects liability protection, financing, and your tax return — and the right structure changes as your portfolio grows. A single LLC per property is common for liability isolation but adds administrative cost. Series LLCs, holding company structures, and S-Corp elections for active flip businesses each solve different problems. There's no universal answer - the right structure depends on lender requirements, state filing costs, and how many properties you're actually running.

REAL ESTATE SYNDICATION & K-1 TAX REPORTING

Syndication investments come with K-1s that carry passive losses, depreciation pass-throughs, and sometimes UBTI exposure if held in a retirement account - all of which need to land correctly on your return. As a limited partner, your losses are passive by default, which matters for how (and whether) you can use them against other income. We reconcile K-1 timing against your other filings and flag anything that needs coordination with the sponsor's tax reporting.

FIX-AND-FLIP TAX TREATMENT & INSTALLMENT SALES

Flips are taxed differently than buy-and-hold property - often as ordinary income and subject to self-employment tax if you're doing it as a business, not an investment. That distinction changes your entity structure, your quarterly estimates, and whether cost segregation even applies. Installment sales, where you finance the buyer directly, can spread that tax liability over multiple years instead of taking the full hit at closing.

WHY WORK WITH T&V

BUILT TO HANDLE
REAL ESTATE COMPLEXITY.

CPA + EA UNDER ONE ROOF.

Technical depth and IRS representation authority, without referring you out.

PROACTIVE, NOT JUST COMPLIANCE.

We're not filing your return and waving goodbye until next April. Planning happens year-round.

INTEGRATES MODEL.

Tax preparation, planning, and bookkeeping handled by the same team - your strategy doesn't get diluted at handoff.

BASED IN IRVINE, SERVING INVESTORS STATEWIDE.

Local when you want to meet in person, remote-friendly for everyone else.

FREE REAL ESTATE INVESTOR
TAX PLAYBOOK

A guide to the tax strategies that matter at each stage of owning rental property, from acquisition through disposition.
We're also building a contemporaneous activity log - a simple tool for tracking and substantiating REPS or material participation hours, the kind of documentation the IRS actually asks for if a return gets examined.

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COMMON QUESTIONS