Why CostSegLogic exists

Quotes between $3,000 and $8,000. Six-week turnarounds. A dozen emails just to get started. And underneath all of it, a sales pitch built on fear: you need this for audit defense. Spend less and the IRS will come for you. A “real” study has to be expensive.

I didn’t buy it. So I started digging into what these firms actually do.

What I found

A cost segregation study is real, legitimate, and genuinely valuable. Done right, it saves an STR owner tens of thousands of dollars in the first year. The methodology is sound. The IRS recognizes it. None of that is in question.

But the work — the asset classification, the depreciation math, the report formatting — has been the same for decades. What used to require a team of engineers and a thick PDF to justify the bill can now be done by software in minutes.

The reason it still costs $5,000 isn’t because the work is hard. It’s because a lot of firms are making a lot of money providing very little — and no one’s been incentivized to change that. The fear-based sales pitch keeps the lights on. The opacity keeps the margins fat.

So I built it for myself

I just wanted a study I could trust, on my own properties, without paying five figures for the privilege. I wanted to see how every number was generated. I wanted to stop being sold to with fear.

I wasn’t looking for a startup. I was looking for a tool that didn’t exist.

So I built it — and I built it right. This isn’t a basement spreadsheet. CostSegLogic is grounded in IRS-aligned methodology, CPA-reviewed, and rigorously verified at every step. The research is done. The hard work is baked in. Every study it produces would hold up to the same scrutiny as one from a firm charging ten times the price.

In fact, we welcome you to put it in front of your own CPA or tax accountant. We’re confident they’ll give you the green light. That’s not bravado — it’s the byproduct of doing the work properly the first time.

Once it was working on my own portfolio, the next thing felt obvious: if I needed this, other STR owners do too. There was no reason to keep it to myself when the alternative is watching people I have a lot in common with get charged five grand for something software can do in minutes.

The truth nobody else will tell you

Almost every cost seg firm out there sells this as free tax savings. That’s a lie — and the willingness to say so out loud is part of what makes us different.

Here’s the truth: cost segregation accelerates your deductions. You take more depreciation now, against today’s income, and the time value of money makes that genuinely valuable. Real money in your pocket, when you need it.

But when you sell the property, a portion of those deductions get recaptured. The IRS comes back for them. Nobody in this industry tells you that. Nobody hands you a recapture schedule alongside your study.

We do. Every CostSegLogic study comes with a clear, plain-English recapture schedule so you know exactly what you’re accelerating, what’s owed back if you sell, and how to plan for it. No surprises. No spin.

And there’s another half-truth the industry glosses over: every state treats this differently. Bonus depreciation, conformity rules, recapture at the state level — it’s not one-size-fits-all, and your federal study alone doesn’t tell the whole story. We give you your state-specific situation in detail, with the schedules to match, so you know exactly what your tax picture looks like where you actually live and file.

That’s what thorough looks like. That’s what trustworthy sounds like. And that’s the standard we hold ourselves to on every single study.

What I believe