By Joseph E. Seagle, Esq.

News highlights for real estate professionals and entrepreneurs with a side of business leadership advice courtesy of Florida's oldest and largest land trustee.

👋 Happy Friday. Today is September 11, twenty-five years on. Whatever you have planned this morning, it is worth taking a minute before the rest of it.

When you are ready, here is the week. It is about defaults. A public spreadsheet reminded several hundred thousand homeowners that a record was making decisions for them. A couple bought a penthouse in a state whose main selling point is a tax rule that only works if you actually move. Florida's Probate Code has already written the part of your estate plan you have not gotten around to. And a change expert explains why the initiative you launched in the spring quietly died over the summer.

The system always has a default. It wins unless you build something against it.

1 big thing: A spreadsheet taught New York what Florida already knew

New York City's Department of Finance released a supplemental pied-a-terre assessment file, and the mayor's office publicized a list of more than 680,000 properties that could theoretically owe a new tax on high-value second homes. The file swept in far more than penthouses. It picked up modest houses in Bayside and single-family homes on Staten Island, Fortune's Catherina Gioino reported on July 30, and it sent ordinary homeowners to estate lawyers at hourly rates they had never paid before.

The tax was the headline. The public record was the story.

Myles Fischer, who co-leads the trusts and estates group at Harris Beach Murtha, told Fortune that "the wealthy and the ultrahigh-net-worth have been in this game for a long time" and that everyone else is catching up. His reason for holding real estate in an entity has nothing to do with taxes. It is the trip-and-fall. If the property sits in an LLC or a trust rather than in your name, a plaintiff sues the entity, and "the only thing that's subject to that lawsuit would be the assets inside that LLC or trust." Mismanage it, commingle funds, treat it like a piggy bank, and that boundary comes down.

Florida readers should notice what did not happen here. Nothing changed. Property records in all 67 Florida counties have always been public and searchable by owner name. New York homeowners just found out all at once, during a news cycle.

The Florida tool, and its actual limits

A Florida land trust is the recorded-title privacy instrument. Under Fla. Stat. § 689.071(8)(g), a land trust "does not fail" because the beneficiaries are not named in the recorded instrument, and under § 689.073(2) a party dealing with the trustee has no duty to inquire into who they are. The deed names a trustee. The beneficiary sits behind it.

Two limits, both of which people miss. First, privacy on the appraiser's website is not immunity. Denisse Moderski of PKF O'Connor Davies made the equivalent point about New York's look-through rule: retitling addressed the record, not the tax bill. Second, the trust has to be drafted. Section 689.071(6) says that if the recorded instrument or the trust agreement does not affirmatively declare the beneficial interests to be personal property, then those interests are real property, which changes how a creditor reaches them and how a lender perfects against them.

What to execute now

Watch for: whether other high-tax jurisdictions publish a comparable assessment file, and whether New York's look-through survives a challenge. Either outcome moves demand for Florida title privacy.

Sources: Fortune, Catherina Gioino, July 30, 2026. Statutory framework: Fla. Stat. § 689.071, § 689.073.

2. Miami's $47 million penthouse is really a tax story

A New York couple will pay $47 million for a two-floor penthouse at the St. Regis Residences in Brickell, Bloomberg's Anna J Kaiser reported on July 31. Five bedrooms, 10,000 square feet, rooftop pool. About 80% of the building's 152 units have sold, generating roughly $900 million.

The number behind the number

Greater Miami has seen 24 home sales over $30 million this year, against two in 2019. Nick Perez, president of the condominium division at Related Group, named the driver without much decoration: "A lot of people love our weather, and mainly love our no state income tax." The buyer pool started half foreign and half domestic and has since skewed heavily northeastern. Brickell has become the office address for Citadel, Thoma Bravo, and Apollo Global Management, and Ken Griffin is building Citadel's headquarters across two blocks of it.

Yes, but the tax move only works if the move is real

Here is the part that gets expensive later. Florida charges no state income tax. Your former state, not Florida, decides whether it lost you, and it decides on domicile, which is a question of intent supported by facts rather than a count of nights.

Fla. Stat. § 222.17 lets you file a sworn declaration of domicile with the clerk of the circuit court in your county. Read the verb. The statute says a person who "shall have established a domicile in this state may manifest and evidence the same" by filing. It is permitted evidence, not a substitute for the underlying facts, and § 222.17(7) preserves other existing methods of proving domicile except as that section specifically provides. A declaration filed the same week you buy is a data point. It is not a defense.

The bigger exposure is not income tax at all. Out-of-state estate tax turns on domicile at death, and several northeastern states tax estates at thresholds far below the federal exemption. Perez's own description of his buyers is the tell. Most plan to live in Miami "at least a substantial portion of the year." A substantial portion of the year is not domicile under the other states’ laws. While Florida requires very little presence to establish a primary residence here, your former state may have more onerous requirements of absence before it lets go of your estate and income for tax purposes.

The Florida takeaway

What's next: watch whether New York's new pied-a-terre surcharge accelerates the northeastern pipeline into Brickell's branded-condo inventory. Article 1 and this one are the same story told from opposite ends of I-95.

Sources: Bloomberg, Anna J Kaiser, July 31, 2026. Statutory framework: Fla. Stat. § 222.17.

In this encore episode of the Ask Joe Anything Trust This podcast, I discuss all the different ways you can title property and which one is best for different situations.

 Listen in or watch on your favorite streaming platform.

3. Practice Pointers: Florida already wrote part of your estate plan

David Rodeck, writing in Kiplinger with Kathryn Pomroy, lists ten things everyone should know about estate planning. Number three is the one that bites. Have a plan, or the government decides for you. In Florida the government has already decided, and its decisions are unusually specific.

The big picture: The Florida Probate Code fills every gap you leave, using defaults written for an average family and applied to yours.

Why it matters: Kiplinger cites Trust & Will's 2026 report finding that 26% of Americans have a will, down from 31% a year earlier, and that 56% have no estate planning documents at all. The asset most likely to be governed by a rule you have never read is your house.

What most people don't know: You cannot freely leave your Florida homestead to just anyone in some cases. Art. X, § 4(c) of the Florida Constitution says the homestead "shall not be subject to devise if the owner is survived by spouse or minor child, except the homestead may be devised to the owner's spouse if there be no minor child," and Fla. Stat. § 732.4015(1) restates it. Moving the house into your revocable trust does not sidestep it. Section 732.4015(2) defines "owner" to include the grantor of the trust and "devise" to include a disposition by trust. Worth knowing that a spouse's homestead rights sit on the list of rights waivable in writing under Fla. Stat. § 732.702, which is one reason a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement matters here. In any event, however, a minor child cannot waive anything.

Key takeaways:

Where people go wrong: Reading that last bullet and stopping. Section 732.703(4)(a) says the statute does not apply "to the extent that controlling federal law provides otherwise." An employee benefit plan is a listed asset under (3)(b), so the statute reaches a 401(k) on its face and then yields to ERISA to whatever extent ERISA displaces it. For that one asset, do not count on the statute. Change the form. Section 732.703(4)(h) also excludes survivorship assets, (4)(b) preserves a post-dissolution designation that expressly names the former spouse, and § 732.703(9) applies only to decedents dying on or after July 1, 2012.

The bottom line: Florida's defaults are not a safety net under your plan. They are a plan that someone else wrote.

This is Florida law. Every state writes its own homestead, intestacy, and revocation-on-divorce rules, so get counsel where you actually live and where your property sits.

Go deeper: Read the full long-form article on aspirelegal.com or download your own homestead devise worksheet to see where you stand.

Sources: Kiplinger, David Rodeck with Kathryn Pomroy, updated April 8, 2026. Statutory framework: Fla. Const. art. X, § 4, § 732.4015, § 732.702, § 732.401, § 732.102, § 732.2065, § 732.507, § 732.703.

4. Coaching Thoughts: Your transformation is not a hero's journey

Greg Satell, writing in Fast Company, makes an argument every business owner who has ever launched an initiative should consider. Companies sell change as Star Wars. It usually plays out as Kafka.

The two stories

The Hero's Journey is the arc you were sold. Someone gets the call to adventure, doubts it, finds a mentor, crosses a threshold, survives the ordeal, comes home changed. It is why you gave your best operator the budget, the team, and the big launch.

Franz Kafka's The Castle is the arc you got. K. is summoned by an authority nobody can confirm, to a role nobody can define, for a purpose nobody can explain. He wanders. Six months in, your initiative lead has stopped being Luke Skywalker and started being K. The training sessions were full because attendance was mandatory. The executive sponsor stopped taking the meeting. The eye-rolls in the hallway were there all along.

Satell's actual claim

Change is not a quest. It is a strategic conflict between your future vision and the status quo, and the status quo has had years to build up its sources of power. It does not surrender gracefully. You cannot will a vision into reality, and heroism is not a strategy. His fix is a resistance inventory run before launch: discover who will resist, what form the resistance takes, and how you mitigate it. Then map which institutional forces back the future vision, which defend the status quo, and which are still on the fence.

The EOS translation

Bottom Line: Most change efforts do not fail for lack of a hero. They fail because nobody mapped the system the hero was up against.

This Week's Challenge: Do a typical SWOT analysis, but consider resistance to your vision as one of your Threats. Take your biggest current initiative and spend thirty minutes writing a resistance inventory. Three columns: who loses something if this works, what form their resistance will take, and what would have to be true for them to back it. Bring it to your next Level 10 or quarterly as an issue.

Source: Fast Company, Greg Satell, June 1, 2026.

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