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Maaser money on sale of a home

Question:

I sold a home, bought an apartment, performed shipputizm on the latter, & still realized a profit. Question: am I required to give maaser on the net profit on the sale/purchase of my homes? Many thanks.

Answer:

Please clarify your question.

Did you sell the apartment afterwards?

Am I to understand that you sold a home, used the money to buy an apartment, spent time, money and energy to renovate the apartment, sold the apartment and made a profit?

 

Or – Are you living in the apartment and have money left over from the sale of your home?

Was the home sold at a profit from the time it was bought? How many years passed? Did you calculate inflation in?

 

In order to evaluate whether you made a profit, you need to see how much you paid for the house (adjusted for inflation), how much it was sold for, that is your profit and is maaserable.

What you do with the money is your business.

If you invested it in a new apartment and sold it at a profit, after deducting the costs of renovation, your time and energy and made a profit, that profit is also maaserable.

The attached summary may offer you some guidelines and help you formulate your query so that a staff member at dinonline.org   can properly address your specific question.

The phraseology of your question indicates that you are under the impression that maaser is a halachic requirement. The attached summary begins with addressing that point. Maaser is an admirable custom, but not obligatory.

Summary ofPractical Hilchos maaser kesofim

Sources:

 

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2 Comments

  1. Shaila #39144. Thank you very much for your reply & document on Maaser. To clarify my question:
    1. I sold my home in NY; made aliya
    2. Purchased an apartment in E”Y & renovated it. I am living in that apartment.
    3. I still have a net profit between the sale of NY home & purchase/renovation of my [new] home in E”Y.
    4. I am living on that net profit as my current source of income.
    5. I was indeed under the impression that maaser was a chiuv. It appears that I can give what I wish, including zero, from the net profit I’ve realized. IS THAT ACCURATE?

    Many thanks.

    1. You are welcome.
      The way to determine profit is not by measuring the amount received for your NY home and the cost of purchase and renovation of your EY apartment.
      You should check how much the NY house costed you when you bought it, adjust that amount for inflation, then see how much you received when you sold it. If you lost money, no maaser and you can even use that as a deduction.
      If you made money, the difference is your profit and is maaserable.
      Once you take off maaser, and purchase your Israeli apartment, you do not calculate maaser until you sell the Israeli apartment. When you sell the Israeli apartment you figure all of your costs for the purchase and renovation, adjust for inflation and see if your selling price is less than or greater than the cost of the apartment (including renovations) If it is greater, then you should take maaser off of the profit earned.
      Maaser is a minhag and not obligatory. this is all explained and sourced int eh document I sent to you.
      Welcome to Eretz yisrael and hope that your dreams here are realized.

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