See a real cost segregation report, page by page
Most providers will not show you a report until after you have paid. Here is a real one, for a $727,500 rental house, with the actual pages and the actual numbers.
Matthew Gigantelli
Lead Cost Segregation Engineer · ASCSP Member M009-25
Buying a cost segregation study is a strange purchase. You pay a few thousand dollars for a document you have never seen, from a firm whose work you cannot inspect, to support a deduction you will carry for years. Almost nobody in this industry shows you the product first.
So here is ours. Everything below comes from a completed study on a single-family rental house: a real property, real measurements, real published cost data, and the real result. The owner's name, the street address, and the property photographs have been removed, and the report is shown as excerpts rather than a downloadable file. Everything you need in order to judge the quality of the work is here.
The short version
A $727,500 house, purchased and placed in service in April 2026. Depreciation is a timing benefit rather than free money, and it only turns into cash if you have income the deduction is allowed to offset. Your own result will differ, so talk it through with your tax preparer.
What you are looking at
The property is an ordinary rental house, not a trophy asset. That is deliberate. It is the kind of property most people actually own.
| Property type | Standalone single-family rental |
| Building size | 2,329 square feet, built 2006 |
| Purchase price | $727,500 |
| Land value, which never depreciates | $224,970 |
| Depreciable basis | $532,676.35 |
| Study type | Purchase price allocation, detailed engineering |
| Components identified | 125 line items |
| Report length | 64 pages |
Land never depreciates, which is why the $224,970 comes off the top before anything else happens. Every number in this study works from the $532,676.35 that is left.
The page that matters most
If you read only one page of a cost segregation report, read this one. It compares the depreciation you can claim with the study against what you would have claimed without it, applies a tax rate, and divides by the fee. Every figure on it should be traceable to the detail later in the document.
The 37% tax rate here is an illustration, not a promise. Your benefit depends on your bracket and on how much income the deduction is permitted to offset, which is a conversation for your tax preparer. A report that presents a savings figure without naming the assumption behind it is selling rather than reporting.
Where the money actually moved
Cost segregation does not invent a deduction. It moves parts of the building out of the slow 39-year category into faster 5-year and 15-year categories, because those parts genuinely wear out sooner. Carpet is not a structural wall. A driveway is not a roof.
| Recovery period | What lives here | Amount | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 year | Flooring, cabinets, appliances, trim, dedicated wiring | $90,874.24 | 17.06% |
| 15 year | Paving, patio, landscaping, site work | $52,992.99 | 9.95% |
| 39 year | Structure, framing, roof, masonry, mechanical systems | $388,809.11 | 72.99% |
| Total | $532,676.35 | 100% |
That 27% is worth remembering as a sanity check. If a provider tells you they can accelerate 50% or 60% of an ordinary rental house, ask which components and on what authority. Aggressive numbers are easy to promise and hard to defend years later.
Every dollar ties back to a building system
This is the page that separates an engineering study from a spreadsheet estimate. Costs are organized by construction division, so the totals are not merely asserted. They are built up from named parts of the house and then checked back against the depreciable basis.
Behind that summary sits the detail: 125 individual line items, each with a quantity, a unit, a unit cost from published construction cost data, and an assigned recovery period. Here are ten of the largest, to show the level the work is done at.
| Component | Quantity | Unit cost | Allocated | Life |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asphalt paving, on base | 7,274 sq ft | $3.99 | $24,769.13 | 15 yr |
| Hardwood plank flooring | 1,039 sq ft | $14.95 | $13,256.27 | 5 yr |
| Site preparation and improvements | 21,500 sq ft | $0.47 | $8,623.84 | 15 yr |
| Hardwood ceiling trim and molding | 1,020 lin ft | $9.71 | $8,452.48 | 5 yr |
| Flagstone paving | 400 sq ft | $22.02 | $7,516.95 | 15 yr |
| Water filtration system | 1 each | $8,075.00 | $7,035.58 | 5 yr |
| Kitchen base cabinets | 32 lin ft | $250.00 | $6,827.39 | 5 yr |
| Carpet, medium grade | 775 sq ft | $6.20 | $4,100.70 | 5 yr |
| Sodded lawn | 3,000 sq ft | $1.33 | $3,405.16 | 15 yr |
| Concrete patio | 446 sq ft | $8.45 | $3,216.30 | 15 yr |
Ten of the 125 line items in this study, chosen to show the range. "Allocated" is the amount after reconciliation to the property's actual basis, which is why it does not equal quantity times unit cost.
That gap is worth understanding, because it is where thin studies go wrong. Published cost data tells you what a component costs to build new today. A real study then adjusts for the local market, adjusts again for the age and condition of the building, and finally reconciles the whole schedule back to what the buyer actually paid. Skip that last step and you end up claiming more basis than the property has.
Who signed it
A report is a professional opinion, and an opinion needs an author. This one opens with a cover letter naming the engineer who prepared it, his credential, the scope of the work, and what the analysis relied on, above his signature.
The IRS guidance its own examiners use looks for exactly this. A study signed by "the engineering department" gives an examiner nobody to ask questions of. A named preparer with a professional membership does, and that is a meaningful part of why a report holds up.
The rest of the 64 pages
The excerpts above are the parts worth showing. For completeness, here is what else is in the document and what each part is for.
How to judge any report, including ours
You do not need to be an engineer to tell a real study from a thin one. Five checks cover most of it.
The study on this page passes all five, which is the only reason it is worth showing you. Our fees run from $1,200 to $12,000 depending on the property, and every study is prepared and signed by a cost segregation engineer. The one above was $1,600.
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Get my free analysisThis article is general information, not tax advice. Depreciation is a timing benefit, part of it can be recaptured when you sell, and whether a deduction reduces your tax in a given year depends on your own circumstances. Please review any study with your tax preparer.