The first question almost everyone asks — before the tax mechanics, before the math on their specific property — is some version of "okay, but what does a cost segregation study cost?" It's a fair question, and the honest answer is that the price range you'll find online is so wide it's almost useless. So let me give you the real numbers, what drives them, and how to tell whether the fee is money well spent on your particular rental.

So how much is a cost segregation study?

For a residential rental — a single-family home, a duplex, a small multifamily building, or a short-term rental cabin — a study should cost somewhere in the low four figures. Our fixed fee for a standard residential study is $1,750. Most reputable residential providers land in roughly the $1,500 to $3,500 band, depending on the property and how the work is scoped.

If someone quotes you $8,000 or $15,000 for a single-family rental, they are almost certainly pricing you off a commercial template. Those numbers are real — for a $4M apartment complex or an office building. They are not the right number for a $400K rental house, and you shouldn't pay them.

Why do residential studies cost so much less than commercial ones?

A commercial study on a large or complex building often involves an on-site engineering inspection, a takeoff of mechanical and electrical systems, and a long appendix of asset-by-asset valuations. That labor is what you're paying five figures for.

Residential property is more standardized. A 2,000-square-foot rental house has a predictable set of components — flooring, cabinetry, appliances, fixtures, site improvements like driveways and landscaping. For most 1-4 unit rentals and STRs, that work can be done accurately from your settlement statement, the appraisal, county assessor data, and photos, without a physical walk-through. We wrote about when a study is actually worth recommending in more detail, but the short version is: less custom labor means a lower, flat fee — and the result is still audit-ready.

What are you actually paying for?

The fee covers a defensible reclassification of your property's basis into shorter IRS recovery periods, documented in a report your CPA can implement directly. That means the engineering-based breakdown of which dollars move from the 27.5-year bucket into 5-, 7-, and 15-year buckets; the supporting methodology aligned with the IRS Audit Techniques Guide; and the depreciation schedules themselves. A flat fee should also mean no surprises — you know the number before you commit, not after.

A worked example: does the fee pay for itself?

Here's the part that actually matters. Take a $425,000 single-family rental, placed in service in 2026, with 80% of the purchase price treated as depreciable basis once you carve out land. That's $340,000 of basis on the standard 27.5-year schedule.

A reasonable residential study reclassifies somewhere around 22% of that basis into shorter-life property — call it $75,000 moving out of the 27.5-year bucket. With 100% bonus depreciation back in effect for property placed in service after January 19, 2025, that full $75,000 is deductible in year one rather than dribbled out over decades.

At a 32% marginal federal rate, that first-year deduction is worth about $24,000 in tax savings. State tax, if you owe it, pushes the number higher. Against a $1,750 study fee, that's better than a 13-to-1 return in the first year — and you can size your own property with the savings calculator before you ever talk to us.

Even if you strip out bonus depreciation entirely and just take the reclassified assets over their shorter lives, the present value of accelerating $75,000 of deductions still dwarfs a sub-$2,000 fee for most owners. The fee is rarely the deciding variable.

When is the fee not worth it?

Plenty of times, honestly. If your basis is small — a low-cost rental where the reclassified amount is modest — the dollars accelerated may not justify even a $1,750 fee. If you're in a low marginal bracket, the deduction is worth less. If you plan to sell within a year or two, depreciation recapture can claw back much of the benefit. And if you have no passive income to absorb the loss and don't qualify for a real estate professional or short-term rental exception, the deduction may sit unused.

This is why we do a free feasibility call before quoting. There are properties where a study doesn't pencil, and we'll tell you when yours is one of them rather than sell you a report you can't use.

What's included in our fee?

Our $1,750 residential study includes the full engineering-based report, the reclassification schedules, the §481(a) catch-up calculation if it's a look-back on a property you've held for a few years, and direct coordination with your CPA so they can implement it without translating anything. No site visit required, no hourly surprises, no upsell. If your situation is unusual — a larger multifamily, a heavy renovation, a mixed-use property — we'll tell you that up front and quote it honestly.

The price of the study is the easy part of this decision. The real question is whether accelerating your depreciation makes sense for your basis, your bracket, and your hold — and that's a fifteen-minute conversation, not a guess off a web page.