By Joseph E. Seagle, Esq.

👋 Happy Friday! Today is the anniversary of Wyoming statehood: July 10, 1890, when the 44th state joined the union, twenty-one years after its territorial legislature became the first in America to give women the vote. Regular readers know Wyoming for another reason. Its LLC statutes show up in half the layered asset-protection structures Florida planners build. Good legal architecture travels.

1 big thing: A $1 million tax break for senior home sellers

A new bill in Congress would let homeowners 65 and older exclude up to $1 million in capital gains when they sell a primary residence, quadrupling the current single-filer cap. The "Nest Egg Protection Act," introduced by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, takes aim at what economists call the lock-in effect, where seniors sit on homes that no longer fit their lives because selling triggers a six-figure tax bill (Kiplinger, Kelley R. Taylor, June 11, 2026).

Why this reshapes Florida's senior housing math

The current exclusion of $250,000 for single filers and $500,000 for married couples was set in 1997 and never indexed to inflation, while home values roughly tripled. CoreLogic data show about 8% of home sales now produce gains above the exclusion, more than double the share five years ago. The Yale Budget Lab finds the affected group skews older and wealthier, with homes averaging $1.4 million and taxable gains around $430,000. Florida is where that profile lives. The Villages, Naples, Sarasota, and coastal Miami-Dade hold decades of appreciation in homes bought in the 1980s and 1990s, and much of that inventory never reaches the market because the owners won't volunteer for the tax hit.

What to execute and watch

For real estate investors — the bill's 2027-2030 window would push a wave of senior downsizing inventory into Florida metros; start building relationships with senior-focused agents and estate planners now, because the seniors will have more cash to downsize comforably. For home services businesses — downsizing cuts both ways: aging-in-place remodels compete with pre-listing prep work, and both pipelines grow if seniors start moving. For licensed professionals — clients 65+ with long-held homes should model a sale under current law versus waiting; the proposal requires 25 years of ownership to qualify, but this could change as the bill winds through committee hearings and negotiations.

Watch for: The bill sits in the House Ways and Means Committee with a long road ahead. Until anything passes, the exclusion stays $250K/$500K and the two-of-five-year residence test still governs. If you support it, follow it and call your congressman to voice support along with changes. It would be nice if they’d simply raise the exclusion from $250K/$500K to $1 million/$2 million, and keep the two-of-five-year residency requirement, then index it to inflation and delete the age floor. But everything you touch with tax policy moves mountains everywhere else, and who knows where this may end up or if it passes at all.

Source: Kiplinger; CoreLogic; Yale Budget Lab.

2. The £1.5 billion caravan empire that fooled private credit

Bloomberg Businessweek published the autopsy of RoyaleLife on June 12, and every private lender in Florida should read it twice. Bob Bull built a British mobile-home (“caravans” in the UK) park business that put him on the Sunday Times rich list at £1.9 billion ($2.5 billion). By December 2023 he was personally bankrupt owing £725 million, his companies had collapsed owing at least £1.5 billion, and his personal creditors were told to expect back less than half a percent.

How the valuations got made

The collateral was mostly dirt. One property dotted with old paintball huts carried a valuation under £3.8 million in 2021; armed with a planning certificate (development entitlements in the U.S.), Bull had it revalued at £79 million and pledged it to U.S. trailer-park giant Sun Communities. A cousin's £625,000 campsite passed to Bull for £3 million, was marked at £4.65 million six months later, and sold last year for its original £625,000. Administrators later found forged planning certificates, faked manufacturer invoices, and the same caravans (mobile homes) sold to multiple buyers.

The lesson for Florida's private lenders

Manufactured-housing communities are a core Florida asset class, and the state's private and hard-money lending market keeps growing. The Bull file is a due-diligence checklist written in reverse. Value the land as it sits today, not the borrower's "projected gross development value." Verify zoning and entitlements with the county, never with the borrower's consultant. Screen the comp set for related-party sales. And walk the site: roughly half of RoyaleLife's 200 properties were, in one former manager's words, "random strips of land in the middle of nowhere."

Yes, but: private credit itself isn't the villain here. Nonbank lending fills real gaps for Florida investors that banks won't touch. The variable is underwriting discipline, which is exactly what evaporates in easy-money years.

What's Next: Bull told Businessweek his next act is "straight to America." Underwrite accordingly. Source: Bloomberg Businessweek, Lucca de Paoli and Kit Chellel, June 12, 2026.

This week’s edition of the Trust This podcast is a repeat, answering questions that many parents of young children have about estate planning.

Listen in or watch on your favorite streaming platform.

3. Practice Pointers: REPS, the "marital loophole" that shelters W-2 income

Most rental losses are trapped. Federal law treats rental real estate as passive activity (IRC § 469), so the paper losses that depreciation creates can normally offset only other passive income, not your salary. Real estate professional status (REPS) under § 469(c)(7) is the exception, and for married couples it comes with a feature tax planners call the marital loophole.

The big picture: A rental can produce positive cash flow and still show a tax loss, thanks to depreciation. A taxpayer who qualifies as a real estate professional and materially participates in the rentals can deduct those losses against active income, including W-2 wages. On a joint return, one qualifying spouse covers both incomes.

Why it matters:

What most people don't know: The two tests are unforgiving. You need more than 750 hours a year in real property trades or businesses, AND more than half of your total working time. A full-time W-2 employee can almost never qualify, which is why one spouse usually downshifts. And spouses can't pool hours; one of you must clear both tests alone.

Where people go wrong:

The bottom line: REPS is a tax status, not an asset-protection structure. How you hold the rentals still decides what a lawsuit can reach, so the Florida land trusts and LLCs that shield the portfolio work alongside the status, not instead of it. Run the hours math with your CPA before anyone quits a job.

Go deeper: Read the full long-form article on aspirelegal.com and download our worksheet to see if REPS is right for your situation.

4. Coaching Thoughts: Your core values were never supposed to be aspirational

Somewhere in a drawer, most companies keep a list of core values that sounds like everyone else's list. Integrity. Excellence. Teamwork. Patrick Lencioni called this out in Harvard Business Review more than twenty years ago ("Make Your Values Mean Something"), describing most corporate values statements as aspirational, bland, toothless, or dishonest. The problem usually isn't the words. It's where the words came from.

Core values are discovered, not drafted

Lencioni separates four kinds of values: core (already true of your best people), aspirational (what you wish were true), permission-to-play (minimum standards like honesty that don't differentiate anyone), and accidental (whatever culture you drifted into). Trouble starts when a leadership team publishes aspirations and labels them as “core.” Your employees spot the gap in about a week, and cynicism moves in behind it. Real core values come out of the founder's own past: family, formative experiences, and the traits of the best people you've ever worked with. A list of pretty words off the internet can prime your thinking. It cannot tell you who you are.

The EOS way to surface them

Bottom Line: Values you aspire to belong on a development plan. Values you already live belong on the wall. Confusing the two is how a company ends up with a plaque nobody believes.

This Week's Challenge: Take 30 minutes and run the rehire exercise. Three names, shared traits, then the history test. Whatever survives is a core value you can actually enforce.

We hope you found this helpful — any feedback is appreciated and can be shared by hitting reply or using the feedback feature below.

Be on the lookout for our next issue! 👋