By default, everything rode the 27.5-year line.
Do nothing, and the IRS treats a building as one asset spread over 27.5 years. For this $38,753,700 multifamily property in Baton Rouge, that meant the owner's deductions arriving in slow, level installments of about $1,409,000 a year, for decades.
The long schedule is not a penalty. It is just what happens when no one separates the parts. The tax code, through MACRS, already draws the lines: different property, different recovery period. Much of a building is shorter-lived than its shell, and always was.
So it comes down to timing. Slow-walk the deductions across 27.5 years, or move a real share of them into the present. The dollars are the same either way. When you receive them is not.
An apartment community is many assets, not one.
A multifamily property depreciates over 27.5 years by default, but a community is far more than its walls: it is unit interiors at scale, appliances and finishes in every unit, and extensive site work across the whole complex.
The Cost Seg America team analyzed this property the way the two engineering approaches the IRS ranks highest call for: component by component, across the whole property. Not a questionnaire, not a software estimate that runs the address through a template and returns an average. An actual engineering analysis of the structure, the site work, and the systems that a cheaper study never bothers to separate.
What an engineered study looks for in a property like this
- Unit interior finishes and flooring, repeated across every unit in the community.
- Appliances and cabinetry serving individual units.
- Site work and land improvements: parking, drives, walkways, site lighting, landscaping, pools, and amenity areas.
- Dedicated electrical and plumbing serving unit systems beyond the base structure.
The result: $14,672,450, roughly 38% of the property's basis, was identified as shorter-life property and moved off the 27.5-year schedule into faster federal depreciation. That is not an estimate or a projection. It is what an engineered analysis documented on this building, to the standard the IRS publishes for its own examiners in the Cost Segregation Audit Techniques Guide.
The dollars do not change. The clock does.
No deduction here was created. All $14.7M of it was already the owner's, waiting on the schedule. The study's work was timing: taking deductions the code had parked in the future and placing them in the present.
That shift is the whole value. A dollar in hand this year can be put to work this year, and a dollar of deduction promised in twenty or thirty years is worth much less by the time it arrives. Inflation and opportunity cost see to that. Pulling $14.7M forward is a head start the tax code extends deliberately, at no interest.
Right now the tailwind is real. Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025, 100% bonus depreciation is permanent for qualifying property placed in service after January 19, 2025. An engineered study surfaces exactly the short-life property that qualifies, so a result like this can be deducted in the first year instead of decades from now.
What accelerating $14.7M is worth.
Reclassifying property is only half the story. The other half is what those accelerated deductions are worth once they are working for you now instead of decades from now. The figures below are illustrative, calculated from this study's real reclassified amount using the assumptions shown.
Illustrative first-year federal tax benefit: $5,428,806. Illustrative 10-year net present value of accelerating: $4,104,162.
Illustrative only, not a promise of results. First-year benefit assumes the $14.7M of reclassified property is deducted in year one under 100% bonus depreciation (permanent under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for qualifying property placed in service after January 19, 2025) at a 37% federal tax rate. Net present value compares taking those deductions now versus the default schedule, discounted at 8% over 10 years. Federal figures only. Your actual benefit depends on your tax situation; your CPA determines what applies to you.
What owners ask about a result like this.
I bought this kind of property several years back. Did I miss my chance?
No. The look-back covers anything purchased, built, or renovated in roughly the last ten years. Your CPA attaches a single Form 3115 to your regular return, and the depreciation you never took arrives as one catch-up deduction this year, calculated as a Section 481(a) adjustment. Nothing gets amended and no old year reopens.
Is a result this size more likely to draw scrutiny?
Cost segregation is an established, IRS-documented method with a published examiner guide, Publication 5653. Under examination, the study's quality is what matters. Cost Seg America builds every study on the two engineering approaches that guide favors most, and the work has passed 125-plus IRS audits without a single loss or a dollar returned.
How does a sale down the road affect all this?
A sale touches depreciation whether or not you cost segregated, and your CPA maps that out ahead of time. For anyone holding the property for years, taking sizable deductions now usually wins over the treatment at sale, and a 1031 exchange can push the question further out. It is planning, not a trap.
Will my property hit the same 38%?
Maybe, maybe not. What reclassifies depends on the construction, the fit-out, and the amount of site work, so the range is wide. An engineered analysis is the only way to pin down your number, and a free proposal gives you that estimate up front.
An engineered cost segregation study on a Baton Rouge, LA multifamily property reclassified $14,672,450 (38%) of a $38,753,700 basis into faster federal depreciation. Engineered, not estimated, by the Cost Seg America team.
Property details
351,626 SF
Building Size