From the founder

A vacation home before the IPO

A liquidity event was coming. The first move was not a house in San Francisco.

Bola Akinsanya · Founder, Unlevered · August 24, 2026

We have been working directly with individuals over the last three months, and it has been the most interesting part of the year. This week we had a client at a much earlier stage than we usually work with. As of today, she and her husband know that they owe more than nine hundred thousand dollars in income taxes. That number has been consistent for a while.

Now she is staring down a liquidity event, a tender offer or an IPO. That can be a very good thing, but it can also multiply the tax liability, both across her paycheck and on the incremental amount owed on the event itself. She came to us wanting help with those calculations and, just as much, with the size of what she could actually afford.

The next question was just as interesting. Where should they buy in the notoriously difficult Bay Area? They live in an apartment in Mission Bay and love it, and they feel priced out of San Francisco proper, where three million dollars is the going rate for entry level. They could buy a house, but it would take a high percentage of their total wealth to get what they want.

So it became a chance to think about it differently. Maybe the first property does not start in San Francisco at all. An investment or vacation home that reduces the tax bill, generates income to help cover its own cost, and builds capital they can later point at San Francisco on their own timeline. Watching that shift in how she thought about the money was the best part.

From there the question was simply where. She wanted to see the markets, and what this actually looks like on the ground. We started exploring Lake Tahoe and Sonoma County for a vacation home that generates a tax deduction while still being a home the family would use and enjoy.

The moral of the story is that we built a platform for tax professionals, the most powerful and defensible geospatial cost segregation tool of its kind on the market. It has been genuinely fun to see that individuals want it directly, and that they want to bring their own CPAs to it.

If a liquidity event is what put you here, this is how the pieces fit together: offsetting RSU and IPO income with real estate, framed honestly as one lever beside the equity-comp planning your advisor runs.

If you are staring down a big income year and wondering where a property fits, our individual portal is at unlevered.io/hello. Bring your CPA. We are happy to help.