Frances Kern Mennone

Opportunity Zone Strategist. Passionate about People, Complex Projects, Urban Renewal, Conservation, Rivers, Rowing, and Trails.

[Barrett Linburg @DallasAptGP]

Real estate won't make you rich. It can help you stay rich.

SpaceX prices its IPO tomorrow and trades Friday under SPCX. Thousands of early investors and employees are sitting on the largest capital gains of their lives.

Here is what real estate can do for them, with real numbers from a deal we just filed taxes on.

After a liquidity event, real estate does three jobs at once. No other asset does all three.

The first job is growth.

Buy in a market with economic tailwinds. Then buy in the neighborhood that sits in the path of growth within that market. Then buy a deal where you control the outcome because you run the renovation and the management.

Stack all three and appreciation stops being a bet on luck.

The second job is sheltering income.

The IRS lets you depreciate a building while it makes money. Add interest expense and a new property can show a large paper loss in a year when cash flow is fine.

Those losses are passive. They offset passive income from other rentals and syndications. They cannot erase a salary unless you qualify as a real estate professional, which has strict tests most W-2 earners fail.

For an investor with gains and passive income spread across many deals, these losses are gold.

The third job is the tax free exit.

A 1031 exchange lets you trade buildings your entire life without paying tax on the gains. Your heirs inherit the portfolio at a stepped up basis. The deferred tax bill dies with you.

The Opportunity Zone structure goes further. Invest a capital gain within 180 days of the sale. Hold for 10 years. Pay zero tax on the appreciation. And the depreciation you deducted along the way never gets recaptured.

Here is what that looks like in practice.

We built a 76-unit apartment building in the Cedars, just south of downtown Dallas. Total cost was $19.8M

Investors put in $8.2M and a bank lent the rest.

The 2025 return is filed. The K-1s show a $4.3M loss. That is 53% of the equity, in year one.

A cost segregation study broke the building into parts with shorter lives. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act brought back 100% bonus depreciation. We deducted all of it the year the building opened.

The building sits in an OZ census tract. Every investor came in with a capital gain.

The $4.3M loss is just tax year 2025. Depreciation keeps running every year of the hold. Over a 10-year hold, the deductions climb well past that first number.

So at year 10, the appreciation on a $19.8M building is tax free. And every dollar of depreciation taken across the entire hold never comes back as recapture.

Most tax strategy pushes the bill into the future. This structure deletes it.

Now back to SpaceX, because the timing matters more than people realize.

An IPO does not create a taxable gain. A sale does. The 180-day Opportunity Zone clock starts the day you sell your shares.

Sell at the IPO this week and your window closes in early December. You land in the original OZ program. The deferral is short, but the 10-year exclusion still applies in full.

Most insiders cannot sell this week. Lockups hold them until winter. Sell after the lockup and your 180-day window crosses into 2027, when the new permanent OZ program begins. That version adds a rolling five year deferral and a basis step up on the original gain.

Same stock. Same gain. A few months of timing changes which tax program you get.

The IPO creates the wealth. The 180 days after you sell decide how much of it you keep.

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

@the_jefferymead @harryjsisson Who is ‘Ally Bari’? 🧐

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

What’s happening… is the correct prompt for this post.

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

@Jason Is Rolex ‘time’ different or better from the normal time? Get a 90’s Ironman and be done with it. 🧭

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

@White_RhinoCap @DallasAptGP @grok Thanks, Grok. Duh.

[Doreen Linder @DorLinder]

I had no idea what the hummingbirds were about on the Spencer Pratt campaign logo but then I saw this. I would vote for @spencerpratt just seeing this. If I could vote for him that is.

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

@DallasAptGP Now that OZ’s are permanent people can build muscle memory on how to use them. Plan for a gain …don’t just react to it. Smarter decisions is the result.

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

@EricLDaugh Freelancers and small business owners FTW! Will be helpful to staff at legitimate 501c 3’s too.

[Chief Nerd @TheChiefNerd]

SACKS: “We're really lucky that [Trump] is President … when this AI revolution is happening.”

JASON: “What would happen if Kamala ‘Ding Dong’ was in right now?”

SACKS: “We'd have no data centers, they'd be using AI to censor us, and they'd be promoting DEI values through AI.”

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

@Jason I’m in

[Ryan Hall, Y’all @ryanhallyall]

The nicest weather in the USA today will occur around Cincinnati, OH.

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

@Jason The comparison to uranium was nutso! Perhaps we should refer to AI as the new printing press. Are we going to deny literacy to Americans?

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

@Jason This is great. Thanks for building a data center for this. 😉

[Nutella @NutellaUSA]

Honored to have traveled further than any spread in history 🚀 Taking spreading smiles to new heights ❤️

[Collin Rugg @CollinRugg]

NEW: Savannah Guthrie releases emotional Easter message amid the disappearance of her mother, says she still believes.

Guthrie says she has questioned if Jesus ever experienced the specific pain she feels regarding the disappearance of her mother.

“Perhaps this is too dark a message to share on Easter morning, but I have long believed that we miss out on fully celebrating resurrection if we do not acknowledge the feelings of loss, pain, and yes, death.”

“It is the darkness that makes this morning’s light so magnificent, so blindingly beautiful. It is all the brighter because it is so desperately needed...”

“So I close my eyes this morning and I feel the sunshine. I see a bright vision of the day when heaven and earth pass away because they are one on earth as it is in heaven.”

“When we celebrate today, this is what we celebrate. And I celebrate too. I still believe. And so I say with conviction, Happy Easter.”

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 WOW! Artemis II pilot Victor Glover gives the PERFECT response to a leftist reporter asking about skin color

"I hope we push that one day...it's about human history, humanity, NOT 'black history,' not 'women's history,' but that it becomes human history!"

RIGHT ON!

Victories for Americans and victory for humanity 🇺🇸🚀

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

We are on the move in the USA.

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

Motorcade brings Wilmington servicemember home after six troops were killed in aircraft crash https://t.co/qgClvujvlb

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

💡 🏘️ 🚨 Bruce Katz and I make the case that housing should be front and center in how states think about opportunity zone designations this year— the data from OZ 1.0 is compelling, and the housing need has only grown since 2017.

Tighter income thresholds and Governors have 90 days to make decisions that will shape investment flows through 2036.

Every community should be making their case now. Here's hoping states bring more intentionality to the process in 2026 than they did in 2018. 🤞

Bottom line: Put housing at the decision making table, you want an Opportunity Zone designation— and this round, they're going to be harder to come by. @bruce_katz @NovogradacNews @InnovateEconomy

https://t.co/ygqMddRsVi

[Frances Kern Mennone @FMennone]

@DallasAptGP Hard to directly compare a deck to a video. Mine goes into the different styles of OZ investments and clarifies who the players are.