In partnership with
Trust This.
By Joseph E. Seagle, Esq.
👋 Happy Friday! It’s time to prepare for National Clean Off Your Desk Day, coming up on Monday. Successful entrepreneurs don’t have cluttered offices. Everything is scanned, filed, calendared, and delegated. A clean environment helps the mind focus on the big picture rather than the big piles of papers stacked on the desk.
❗Situation Awareness: 2025 is in the rearview mirror, and analyses are already underway.
1 big thing: Florida’s 2026 real estate outlook
Florida housing strategy is shifting again heading into 2026—and the playbook matters for builders, investors, and professional practice owners who ride Florida’s growth cycle (clients, employees, and real estate all live here).
The big picture: John Burns Research & Consulting’s 2026 outlook argues the winners won’t be the “rate-cut optimists,” but the operators who refine product strategy, lock in land advantages, protect balance sheets, and run tighter day-to-day execution in a choppy economy.
Vision: Florida’s next buyer isn’t just “first-time.”
JBREC points to strong growth in two age bands—40–55 and 70+—and expects more migration from high-cost regions to lower-cost, lifestyle-friendly markets. Translation for Florida business owners: demand will skew toward right-sized, convenient, service-rich housing (think: low-maintenance, flexible layouts, proximity to healthcare, and “work-from-anywhere” functionality).
That also means opportunity for Florida professional practices: these cohorts disproportionately drive healthcare utilization, wealth planning, and small-business formation.
Traction: Plan for “split-rate reality” (and stop waiting for magic mortgages)
JBREC expects short-term rates to ease with a weaker economy, while longer-term rates (including mortgages) can stay higher for longer due to inflation pressures (tariffs, labor constraints, policy uncertainty). Mortgage-rate buydowns have become a habit-forming incentive.
For Florida entrepreneurs: underwrite deals assuming sticky financing costs, not a sudden affordability rescue. For practices: expect continued friction in staff housing and patient/customer mobility, especially in expensive coastal markets.
People / Process / Data: Land, capital, and M&A become the competitive moat
JBREC says the best risk-adjusted returns are showing up in land entitlement and development, while financially strong firms keep hunting acquisitions—and 2026 could bring more consolidation.
Florida operators should track three metrics monthly: (1) active listings and price cuts in your county, (2) insurance/HOA volatility for target neighborhoods, (3) your cost of capital and DSCR under “no-rate-relief” assumptions.
Takeaway for Florida: 2026 rewards disciplined operators. Build (or buy) for the demographics moving in, structure capital conservatively, and treat land/control of execution as your edge—not hope.
What to watch next: If incentives keep doing the heavy lifting, expect margins to stay pressured—and deal flow (especially distressed or strategic) to rise as weaker balance sheets tap out.
2. National 2026 real estate outlook
A national housing outlook for 2026 is basically this: the U.S. market isn’t gearing up for a comeback tour — it’s settling into a long, boring, healthier baseline. Forecasts from Redfin, Realtor.com, and Zillow all point to mortgage rates hovering in the low-6% range, modest home-price growth, and a slow thaw in inventory that nudges the market closer to balance.
Vision: The “Great Housing Reset” replaces the boom/bust story
Redfin frames 2026 as the start of a “Great Housing Reset”: a yearslong normalization where affordability improves gradually because income growth outpaces home-price growth — not because prices collapse.
Realtor.com and Zillow land in the same neighborhood: stable-to-slightly-lower borrowing costs, steady demand, and price growth that looks more like “math” than “mania.”
Traction: What the big forecasts actually predict
The consensus centerline: rates ~6.3% on average, home prices up low-single digits, and sales edging higher as sidelined buyers re-enter.
Realtor.com: Mortgage rates avg 6.3%, existing-home prices +2.2%, existing-home sales +1.7% to 4.13M, and for-sale inventory +8.9%.
Redfin: 30-year fixed averages 6.3%, prices up ~1%, and existing-home sales up ~3% to ~4.2M.
Zillow: home values +1.2%, existing-home sales 4.26M (+4.3%), multifamily rents +0.3%, with rates unlikely to dip below 6%.
People / Process / Data: Why it matters beyond real estate
This is a “planning-market” year for employers, operators, and investors: fewer pricing shocks, slightly better mobility, and rental relief in parts of the country. Zillow expects rent affordability to improve as rent growth stays muted, while Cotality describes the U.S. as still working through a slow rebalancing shaped by the lock-in effect.
Takeaway: If you’re building a budget for 2026, assume rates stay above 6%, prices creep up, and transactions rise modestly — meaning strategy beats speculation.
What’s next: Watch whether inventory recovery holds without reigniting bidding wars — and whether builders keep using incentives (rate buydowns, concessions) to move standing supply.
This week’s episode of the Trust This podcast answers the question of whether you need a will at all, depending on your situation. The question comes from a Redditor, asking whether they even really need to worry about it.
3. High earners and business owners get new 2026 tax planning levers
A sweeping federal tax law taking effect in 2026 quietly reshapes how high earners and business owners manage wealth, taxes, and succession. For Floridians, the changes reward proactive planning—and penalize complacency.
What’s new: The headline change is permanence. The federal estate and gift tax exclusion is now locked in at $15 million per individual (roughly $30 million per married couple), indexed for inflation. That alone alters long-term estate planning assumptions that were set to expire at the end of 2025.
Beyond estate taxes, the law expands income-tax planning tools:
A new tax-deferred savings account available beginning in 2026, funded by individuals and employers, with IRA-like deductions.
Expanded charitable deduction options, including deductions for non-itemizers and new limits that change how large gifts are optimized.
A qualified small business stock (QSBS) expansion allowing certain founders and early investors to potentially eliminate federal capital gains on exit.
Revamped and permanent Opportunity Zone incentives, with enhanced benefits for rural projects.
Restored R&D credits, expanded business interest deductions, and immediate expensing for equipment and property.
What it means for Florida business owners
For many of our clients, the focus shifts:
Less urgency to remove assets solely to avoid estate tax
More emphasis on income tax minimization, entity structuring, and exit planning
Greater opportunity to coordinate Florida LLC and asset protection strategies with federal tax benefits
Consider converting S-Corps to C-Corps before an exit to delay or avoid capital gains taxes.
Florida’s lack of a state income tax amplifies the value of federal deductions—but only if timing and structure are handled correctly.
Bottom line: This law doesn’t eliminate taxes. It changes which taxes matter most and when. Florida business owners who integrate tax planning with estate planning, asset protection strategies, and business succession planning will gain flexibility. Those who “set it and forget it” will miss it.
The Year-End Moves No One’s Watching
Markets don’t wait — and year-end waits even less.
In the final stretch, money rotates, funds window-dress, tax-loss selling meets bottom-fishing, and “Santa Rally” chatter turns into real tape. Most people notice after the move.
Elite Trade Club is your morning shortcut: a curated selection of the setups that still matter this year — the headlines that move stocks, catalysts on deck, and where smart money is positioning before New Year’s. One read. Five minutes. Actionable clarity.
If you want to start 2026 from a stronger spot, finish 2025 prepared. Join 200K+ traders who open our premarket briefing, place their plan, and let the open come to them.
By joining, you’ll receive Elite Trade Club emails and select partner insights. See Privacy Policy.
4. Unlock employees’ engagement
Sunbeams touch the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west of downtown Asheville on the first 2026 afternoon.
Most leaders want buy-in. What they really need is ownership. When people help build the idea, they’ll fight to protect it. That’s the difference between compliance and commitment—and it’s the key to lasting employee engagement.
Why it matters: Employees who feel like passengers will do what’s required and no more. Those who feel like co-pilots—trusted to shape direction—bring energy, creativity, and accountability. Ownership turns “the company” into “our company.”
How to build ownership:
Collaborate early. Don’t just announce new initiatives—invite your team to help define them. Ask questions like, “What would make this goal exciting for you?” or “What’s getting in the way of us hitting this target?”
Delegate outcomes, not tasks. Give people a destination and the authority to chart the course. It builds confidence and reveals leaders you didn’t know you had.
Show visible trust. Let employees present their ideas to leadership or clients. Public trust multiplies engagement faster than private praise.
Own KPIs. Every employee should own a metric (numeric goal) that they’re required to reach or achieve each week, and then report out at weekly meetings to know whether they’re winning the game of work.
Keep a meeting pulse. Weekly team meetings must include issues that employees (not just leaders) identify, discuss, and solve on their own.
Recognize ownership. Give credit to employees when they exhibit the ownership role.
The mindset shift: Move from control to contribution. When you stop trying to get buy-in and start creating co-authors, the team becomes emotionally invested in success—and far less likely to disengage.
Bottom line: Ownership is the engine of engagement. If you want people to care about results, let them help write the plan that produces them.
Challenge for the week: Choose one project, pull your team in early, and ask them to shape the “how.” You’ll be amazed how quickly enthusiasm turns into excellence and how it frees up leaders’ time and energy to focus on even bigger visions.
We hope you found this helpful — any feedback is appreciated and can be shared by hitting reply or using the feedback feature below.
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Be on the lookout for our next issue! 👋