Ah, so now the “I need a noise machine that is basically a jet engine except louder and without all the wind” thread comes a little more clear.
I’m a CPA, and thought I’d try to get you pointed in a direction on this. But here’s a caveat: I haven’t been in public practice for almost five years, so my 1040 fu is a bit rusty.
Anyway, as I read it, the qualifying test is not whether you’ve owned the home for two years. It’s whether you’ve taken this exclusion in the past two years. Might be a distinction without much difference in your case, I don’t know. So if you’re a first-time homeowner, or lived in a rental for a while before buying the current place, you should be okay. But here’s the thing I’m fuzzy on: the pubs describe a “two-year period ending on the date of the sale” - but when you exclude income or gains, you do it when filing a return. So it’s unclear to me if the real test would be two calendar years before the sale, or two 1040 filing dates prior. Could be a pretty significant difference. Most likely academic, though, since you describe a very short holding period (9 months).
If you have made the election recently, then you’re outta luck. But unless you’re in an area where real estate is going crazy, it shouldn’t be too bad. The price probably won’t have run up that awful much.
Also, generally in tax, you calculate the gain on a sale of an asset by starting with the actual final sales price (not necessarily the offer) and subtract from that all costs of sale (realty fees, appraisals, inspections you paid for, etc) so you get to the cash you truly realized from the sale. Then, you subtract your adjusted basis in the asset from that to arrive at your gain. Your adjusted basis can be calculated by starting with your purchase price, adding all your filing fees, title insurance, other settlement and closing costs, and the cost of any improvements you made. I think ‘improvements’ is where you might have a little wiggle room - you wouldn’t believe what kind of homepwner expenses some peeps will try to shoehorn here - but I wouldn’t recommend being too aggressive without a tax-specializing CPA signing off on it. The fucking IRS are worse than mafioso when it comes to their interpretation of how much of your asset base they’re entitled to.
Anyway, there’s a good little table the IRS came up with to help with adjusted basis calculations, and then coming up with the gain in the IRS Pub on this deal. Actually, it’s full of pretty good general info on the whole topic, and is pretty understandable (in my opinion): Publication 523.
Hope it’s helpful. Feel free to ask any more questions if you have any, and I’ll do my best to answer.