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Bola Akinsanya

The Unlevered blog

Depreciation Diaries

Founder writing about asset depreciation, the personal stories, the approach behind Unlevered, and more.

by Bola Akinsanya · Founder, Unlevered

Illustrative buying power: $600K without cost seg, $850K with it, $250K more a client can buy.

September 24, 2026

Realtors love cost seg. It expands their clients' budgets.

Realtors help clients weigh every factor in a purchase. In STR markets cost segregation is one of them, and counting the first-year deductions raises what a client can afford.

A loaded rack of bikes, kayaks, and paddleboards at a short-term rental, the adventure gear that helps a listing book more weekends.

September 18, 2026

Adventure gear, funded by cost seg

Bikes, kayaks, and paddleboards that sell the whole trip. What hosts buy with the first-year cash a cost segregation study frees up.

A backyard pool at a short-term rental, a recreation upgrade that lifts the nightly rate.

September 18, 2026

Recreation upgrades, funded by cost seg

Pools, courts, playsets, and home gyms that keep guests longer. Where hosts reinvest the first-year cash a cost segregation study frees up.

A hot tub on a short-term rental deck, the wellness amenity guests filter for first.

September 18, 2026

Wellness amenities, funded by cost seg

Hot tubs, saunas, and soaking tubs guests filter for first. Reinvestment ideas for the first-year cash a cost segregation study frees up.

An outdoor kitchen and living area, a backyard upgrade that photographs better than anything indoors.

September 18, 2026

Backyard upgrades, funded by cost seg

Fire pits, outdoor kitchens, and pergolas that photograph better than anything indoors. What hosts fund with the cash a cost segregation study frees up.

A short-term rental home theater and smart-home setup that lowers the day-to-day hosting workload.

September 18, 2026

Smart home tech, funded by cost seg

Smart thermostats, keyless entry, and EV chargers that cut the hassle. Reinvesting the first-year cash a cost segregation study frees up into a rental that runs itself.

A pro-style range in a short-term rental kitchen, the upgrade guests notice first.

September 18, 2026

Kitchen upgrades, funded by cost seg

The refrigerator, range, and appliances guests notice. Where hosts put the first-year cash a cost segregation study frees up.

A statement range, the kind of luxury rental splurge that cost segregation cash helps fund.

September 18, 2026

Luxury splurges, funded by cost seg

Statement ranges, new HVAC, and the big-ticket upgrades that finally pencil once cost seg helps pay for them.

A Timber Ridge bedroom at Sea Ranch: a low oak platform bed with a mustard duvet and a checked throw, a built-in oak closet, under a dark A-frame ceiling.

September 18, 2026

Sourcing List for Guest Favorite Airbnbs

The full furnishing, appliance, and operational sourcing list behind The Timber Ridge, a top-1% Sea Ranch short-term rental — 405 items across 16 categories, with shop links, room tags, and a branded Excel download.

Real estate professional status at 750 hours a year, struck through, next to material participation for short-term rental owners at more than 100 hours a year and more than anyone else involved.

September 1, 2026

Top 5 Cost Seg Questions this week

The five cost segregation questions I got this week: how much a house deducts, what return to expect, furniture, material participation, and whether the deduction can be made bigger.

A pair of cabins in Sonoma County, the kind of tax-smart vacation home an owner might buy before a liquidity event.

August 24, 2026

A vacation home before the IPO

A pre-IPO client owed $900K+ in taxes with a liquidity event looming. Instead of stretching for a first home in San Francisco, we looked at a tax-smart vacation home in Tahoe and Sonoma, and how she reframed the whole purchase around the Where to Invest tool.

12x the cash, 2.5x the write-off. A $190K backyard ADU depreciates in full; a $2.35M LA home depreciates only $470K because $1.88M of it is land.

August 17, 2026

Where you invest, and the land under it, changes the math

An LA short-term rental worth $2.35M depreciated to only $470K because land was most of it, while a $190K backyard ADU depreciates in full. Why land value, not just price, decides your cost segregation deduction.

Is it worth it? A $250,000 property falls below the roughly $400,000 line; $500,000 and $1,000,000 clear it.

August 7, 2026

The $400K threshold

Is cost segregation worth it? Our rule of thumb is $400K and up, on both income and investment. Why the math technically works below that line but stops being worth your time, with a real $1M short-term rental example.

One rental in one year of hosting: cleaner, guest spend, handyman, landscaping, chimney sweep, window washing, and carpet cleaners — $147,000 to $180,000 of local economic activity.

July 16, 2026

Cost Segregation Exists to Drive Economic Activity (It's Not a Loophole)

People treat cost segregation like something you got away with. It is the opposite. It is a lever Congress built on purpose, and I have watched it work from inside the house.

The Unlevered asset-mapping engine tracing one component from the photo, through the component library, to its asset class and year-one deduction.

July 14, 2026

Why Unlevered's Data Mapping Engine Unlocks 5–20% More Deductions

Why a deterministic engine beats a purchased Excel template. An estimator guesses the whole asset; we verify everything public first, then estimate only the small part that is left.

The wine country property at the center of the study: two cabins, a pool, and two detached prefab studio units on a wooded parcel.

July 10, 2026

What a top-down estimate missed: $120K+ in a gym and a sauna

A client paid $3,000 for a cost segregation study, then asked us to reverse engineer it. Two movable buildings the top-down estimate buried in the 39-year shell belonged in the 5-year class. Here is the $120,425 story.

A day-job hour at $296 compared against an hour on the cottage at $5,000 in deduction.

July 8, 2026

Managing My Real Estate Investment Made Me $5K/hr

Timing my second property to my exit, pricing my hours, and the simple math behind material participation. A $500,000 deduction earned across a hundred hours a year — the most valuable hour I had, so it went first.

The remodeled Sea Ranch great room — redwoods through the A-frame glass.

July 7, 2026

The ugliest house in Sea Ranch

How an IPO, a DJ, and a $550K+ tax bill led me to build a cost segregation platform. The founder origin story, with the tax returns to back it up.