You've had years where the income was extraordinary. You couldn't say precisely where it went. Some of it went to taxes, more than you expected, and the rest got absorbed by a house, a car, tuition, and the general expansion of life that follows a strong twelve months. The number on your 1099 and the number in your accounts have never quite reconciled.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure a salaried person gets by default doesn't exist for you. No HR department enrolled you in anything. No payroll system withheld anything. Every retirement dollar you've saved, you had to decide to save, in a month when a deal was closing and a hundred other things wanted your attention first. We've worked with CRE brokers and developers for years, and this is the story we hear most.
What changes when your income is commission rather than salary
A salaried household plans against a known number. You plan against a range, and the range is wide. Two brokers with identical five-year totals can have completely different years inside that window, and the one who had the big year first behaves differently than the one who had it last.
That variability changes almost every downstream decision. How much cash to hold, how to set a spending baseline, when to fund retirement accounts, how to handle debt, and whether a strong year gets deployed or absorbed. Answer those against last year's income and you'll over-commit after a good stretch and panic during a slow one.
You're running a business, whether or not you call yourself an owner
Most CRE professionals in Central Florida are paid as 1099 contractors or through an LLC or S corporation they set up because someone told them to. That structure carries real consequences, and most of them are advantages that go unused.
The retirement plan options alone are worth the conversation. A solo 401(k) or a SEP IRA can shelter substantially more income than a typical workplace plan. Which one fits turns on your entity, whether you have employees, and whether you want to make both employee and employer contributions. Then there's which expenses genuinely belong to the business, how you handle self-employment tax, and whether an S corporation election makes sense at your income. Nobody's going to raise these with you, which is most of the reason we exist.
The concentration nobody flags for you
Think about where your risk actually sits. Your income depends on Central Florida commercial real estate transaction volume. Your largest asset is probably a house in Central Florida. If you've invested alongside deals, you probably hold limited partner stakes, a passive slice of someone else's project, in Central Florida property. Maybe your spouse works in the industry too.
That's one economy funding your income, your net worth, and your retirement. It works beautifully in an up cycle. The question worth asking in a good year is whether your liquid portfolio is genuinely diversifying away from that exposure or quietly doubling down on it. Those two look similar on a statement and behave very differently in a downturn.
What most brokers have, and what tends to be missing
By the time brokers come to us, they've usually assembled pieces. A brokerage account. An old 401(k) from a prior W-2 job. Maybe a SEP IRA opened one April in a hurry, a life insurance policy someone sold them, and a CPA who files the return and is otherwise not in the conversation.
What's usually missing is the connective tissue between those pieces.
- A cash reserve sized to your actual gap between closings rather than a generic three-month rule
- A retirement plan that matches your entity and gets funded on purpose, not in a rush before a filing deadline
- Quarterly estimated tax payments planned against the year in progress rather than reconstructed after it ends
- Disability coverage that reflects commission income, which is harder to underwrite than salary and often gets covered badly
- A written rule for what happens to a large commission before it lands
- Someone coordinating your CPA, your attorney, and your investments so the three don't contradict each other
When you probably don't need one yet
Plenty of brokers don't. If you're early in your career, your income is still modest and fairly steady, you're funding a workplace plan consistently, and your tax return runs a page or two, you probably don't need us yet. Careful reading and discipline will get you most of the way.
The threshold is complexity, not age. It usually gets crossed when the swings get big enough that a single year changes your tax picture. Or when you form an entity, start investing in deals, or look at a strong year and realize you don't have a plan for it.
What to do next
- Add up your last five years of income and divide by five. Compare that number to what your current spending assumes. The gap is the first thing worth fixing.
- Find out which retirement plan your entity structure actually allows, and what the contribution deadlines are for this year. That answer has a calendar attached to it.
- Book a 20-minute introductory call. We work with brokers and developers across the Orlando market, and the first conversation is about how your income actually behaves. You don't need to bring anything.
Frequently asked questions
Is my CPA enough?
A good CPA is essential and does something different. Most tax preparers work backward, reporting the year you already had. Planning happens before December, while there's still time to change the outcome. The two roles complement each other, which is why we coordinate with your CPA rather than asking you to replace them.
I already invest in the deals my firm brings me. Isn't that enough?
Deal participation can be a reasonable part of a plan, and it's not a plan by itself. LP interests are illiquid, often call capital on someone else's schedule, and concentrate you further in the same market that pays your commissions. The planning question is what share of your net worth belongs there and what the rest should be doing.
What if I've already had my biggest years?
That changes the work rather than removing the need for it. The focus shifts to what the accumulated assets have to support, how distributions get sequenced across account types, and what a transition out of production looks like. Brokers five years from stepping back have different questions than brokers who are still building. Both are good questions.
Do you work with brokers who aren't in Orlando?
Yes. Our office is in Maitland and much of the relationship runs over video, so we work with CRE professionals across Florida and in other states. The market specifics differ, but the structural issues around commission income and 1099 filing look much the same everywhere.
How do you charge, given that my income moves around?
Our minimum annual fee is $10,000, charged based on assets under management. If your assets don't reach the minimum on their own, we can work out other ways to meet it. We'll walk you through all of it on the introductory call, which costs nothing.
