Texas just made some places we already wanted to invest a lot more attractive. The state nominated 605 new Opportunity Zones. Hold a real estate investment in one of these blue areas for 10 years and the appreciation is tax-free. The governor's office prioritized what we wanted to see: local support and real projects that have a credible path to getting built. That matters if you're looking to invest capital gains over the next decade. There are good opportunities to develop and renovate properties in growing Texas communities, with the added benefit of some very favorable tax treatment. Invest eligible capital gains through a Qualified Opportunity Fund under the new rules starting in 2027 and you get a five-year deferral on those gains. Hold the qualifying investment for at least ten years and the appreciation is federally tax-free, with no depreciation recapture on the qualifying real estate gain. If you own rental properties, you know how much that last part matters. You take depreciation deductions along the way, and normally the IRS wants some of that benefit back when you sell. The OZ structure lets you avoid that recapture after the ten-year hold. So what did Texas get right with this map? In 2018, governors had about three months to pick zones for a brand-new program. Nobody had much experience with what would attract OZ capital or turn a designation into an actual project. This time, Texas asked communities to make the case. Is there local support? Can a project realistically start in the next two to four years? Is the zoning there? Utilities? A site somebody will sell or a building somebody wants to renovate? A developer willing to put it in writing? Those are the questions we ask before spending money on a deal. I'm glad the state was asking them before picking the map. Dallas County went from 18 tracts on the "OZ 1.0" map to 60 nominations. Harris County went from 105 to 51. These were substantial changes, and overall I think the selections are much better. The nominations still need Treasury certification, with the new map taking effect January 1, 2027. But developers and investors can start looking at where the opportunities are now. Texas has been clear that it wants growth, investment and more construction. This selection process gives us another reason to take that seriously. And the OZ program is permanent now. We can build a pipeline of projects, develop relationships with cities, and plan successive investments around it. We already wanted to own and develop real estate in a lot of these areas. Being able to do it with deferred capital gains going in and tax-free appreciation after a long-term hold makes us considerably more interested.

What car would you buy today if it had FSD?

Imagine a podcast where a sunbelt multifamily broker has to read every page of the OM to @resetbasis

Love old maps Dallas 1887 vs today

Nick is sick (literally) but just took 10 minutes to deep dive one of our apartment websites and gave me some great advice Grateful to him

Anybody using these successfully? We recently rebuilt all of our property management websites (agentic optimized) and getting a material number of renters inquiring directly from ChatGPT, but have not done any advertising on the platform yet Curious to hear if anyone is using the ad platform

Two guys who love Opportunity Zones

Dallas may end up with more Opportunity Zone census tracts than any other city in the country Dallas Eco Dev nominated 42 census tracts. The Governor's office accepted all of those and added two more! To contrast, in 2018 the City asked for 62 and got 15. Statewide, more than 1,200 tracts were proposed by more than 175 economic development organizations and county judges across 114 counties. 605 were ultimately designated using formal scoring criteria Through 2024, Texas has received $7.84B of OZ equity investment and roughly 75% of that has been into urban areas. With the combination of a permanent/improved program, a better map, and more thoughtfully chosen tracts...I think Dallas is going to receive several hundred million of equity investment per year going forward that it would not receive but for the OZ program

So you’re saying there’s a chance

The Texas triangle is lit up tonight. Big wins for four football programs all ranked in the top 25 UT Texas A & M SMU University of Houston

This is the new Mercedes VLE. Electric van supposed to debut in the US next year with point to point self driving If (big IF) they nail self driving then it could sell well This is the type of luxurious people carrier that families want from Tesla and aren’t getting

Roadtrips were something I worried about before buying my Model Y Now I can’t imagine a long drive in any other car Stopping at a supercharger for 15-20 minutes is how long it takes for my family to make a bathroom stop anyway

Wealthy investors now have $170 billion in a strategy designed to generate tax losses. Four years ago, it was $2 billion. CNBC wrote about it this week. It's called tax-aware long-short investing, and if you're sitting on a big stock gain, your wealth manager may have already brought it up. I read the article and thought about pairing it with Opportunity Zones. One generates capital losses. The other gives you five years before a capital gain becomes taxable. And along the way, you move some of your wealth from a concentrated stock position into real estate. 🔷 What the account does You've probably heard of tax-loss harvesting. Sell investments that are down and use the losses to offset gains on investments you sell at a profit. The problem is that after years of rising markets, you may not have enough losers. A tax-aware long-short account owns stocks and also shorts other stocks. When stocks rise, the shorts can produce losses. When stocks fall, the stocks it owns can produce losses. The manager closes losing positions, books the losses, and replaces them while trying to maintain the account's intended stock-market exposure. You can fund the account with appreciated shares without selling them first. As losses become available, the manager can use them to offset gains from selling down your concentrated position. A dollar of capital loss offsets a dollar of capital gain. How much the account generates, and how quickly, depends on the strategy and the market. 🔷 Where Opportunity Zones fit Normally, if you sell appreciated stock this year, you need losses available this year to offset the gain. An Opportunity Zone investment changes the calendar. Under current IRS guidance, you can sell stock in late 2026 and invest the gain in a Qualified Opportunity Fund in January 2027, provided you're within the 180-day window. The gain stays deferred for five years. At the five-year mark, 10% is forgiven. Now you have until 2032 to plan around that gain, while the money is invested in a real estate project. I joke that if you ask 10 CPAs whether they'd rather have a client's tax bill coming due next April or five years to plan for it, all 10 will take the five years. Give them a loss-generating account to work with during those five years and you can see why this pairing interests me. 🔷 The math You own $10M of Nvidia with a $1M basis. You want to diversify into both other stocks and real estate. Sell $2.5M of Nvidia in late 2026. Those shares have $250K of basis, leaving a $2.25M gain. Invest the $2.25M gain in a QOF in January 2027. The $250K of basis is yours to keep. Recognition of the gain moves to 2032. Contribute the remaining $7.5M of Nvidia to a tax-aware long-short account without selling it. Over the next five years, the manager seeks to generate losses and uses some to offset gains as it sells down your remaining Nvidia. Unused capital losses can carry forward. Then the OZ gain comes back. After the 10% reduction, you have $2.025M of taxable gain. At a 23.8% federal rate, that's about $482K in tax before loss offsets. If you have $1M of available capital losses, the bill falls to about $244K. If you have $2.025M of available capital losses, the federal tax on that original sale is zero. The actual tax bill will depend on how much capital loss you have available in 2032. And losses already used to sell Nvidia aren't available again in 2032. 🔷 The money wasn't sitting still The $2.25M was invested in real estate. Hold the qualifying OZ investment ten years and its appreciation can be tax free too. Meanwhile, the long-short account is working to diversify the remaining Nvidia into a broader stock portfolio. You started with one company. You're moving toward ownership in many companies and a real estate investment. 🔷 The trade-offs Long-short accounts charge fees, use leverage and short positions, and cannot promise a particular amount of losses. Your remaining Nvidia can fall while you're waiting to sell it. Harvesting losses generally defers tax. Embedded gains remain in the account, and unwinding it can trigger a bill. The OZ portion is a long real estate hold. You can't sell a quarter of an apartment building when you need cash. If the losses aren't there in 2032, you need another source of money to pay the tax. And the tax benefit doesn't save a bad deal. Pick the building first. If you're sitting on a large stock gain, ask your CPA and wealth manager to model the combination. This is a tax post from a guy who builds apartments.

I remember that in the days after 9/11 every store sold out of American Flags

Has a Pulitzer prize ever been given out for Twitter posting? Today's full day of posts by @25YearsAgoLive is worthy of nomination

I'm about to start a webinar on Opportunity Zones for 50+ Texas Economic Development directors. These are the people in charge of bringing jobs, vibrancy, and tax base to towns big and small. I'll teach them OZ. But that's one tool. My real pitch: tell me the building that eats your police budget. The complex nobody will touch. The eyesore on Main Street. Then tell me what you'll put on the table to make it pencil. If it's in an Opportunity Zone, even better. When the municipality is a partner & advocate for your project then everything (including the numbers) works better