About HomeBasisLedger
HomeBasisLedger helps everyday homeowners — and the multi-unit investor — keep the one record most people don’t realize they need until the day they sell: what they paid for their home, and everything they’ve put into it since. In one place, and ready the moment it counts.
Why I built it
I’m Joe Farro. I’ve spent more than 35 years in mortgage origination, and across that time I’ve helped build technology whenever I saw a real need with no good answer for it — Loan Originator Pro, Home Express Mortgage, and the Five Star Communication platform among them. Each one started the same way this did: with a gap I kept hearing about from clients.
Working with buyers who later sold one home and bought another, the same problem kept surfacing — there was no easy way to track and store the receipts for the home they were selling. If you’re not working at a CPA’s level in QuickBooks, there simply wasn’t a good option for the everyday homeowner.
Underneath it sits a knowledge gap, too. Most people never learn that a home’s cost isn’t only its purchase price — the improvements you make along the way add to it. Together they form the adjusted basis that decides how much of your gain is taxable when you sell. The technology to close that gap cheaply and simply finally exists, so I built the intuitive, low-cost tool I wish my clients had had all along.
Who it’s for
Every homeowner, whether you own one house or several — the everyday owner who just wants their records safe for the day they sell, and the multi-unit investor who needs the same discipline across a portfolio.
How it’s built
Three commitments shaped it from the start:
- Affordable first.Priced to be the lowest-cost way to keep this record — a tool that only pays off years from now has to be easy to say yes to today.
- Reminders that keep it honest. Built-in nudges so your record stays accurate over the years, instead of becoming a scramble the month you list.
- Ready when it matters.Your records in hand the moment you — or your tax professional — need them.
The goal
Plainly stated: to help one million homeowners lower their tax burden and keep more of what their home has earned. Improvements are what can pull a sale back under the line — but only if you can show them. HomeBasisLedger makes showing them simple.
One last thing. This isn’t something I built and walked away from — it’s a tool I’ll be using for my own home.
— Joe Farro, Founder · Home Express Group LLC
HomeBasisLedger provides recordkeeping tools, not tax advice. Whether a project qualifies toward your basis, and how your basis affects what you may owe, is a conversation for you and your tax professional.