Notice how quick-and-clipped the uploaded streaming video is - not the usual wide shots of assembled dignitaries and city officials
COVERING MESA: The GRID Ground-Breaking
The GRID breaks ground on a new $75-Million Mixed-Use Development in Downtown Mesa
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> "Bringing jobs into the community is a leap forward.” . . . real estate investors would like more from the Treasury in the next round of regulations.
In an interview, Quinn Palomino, chief executive at Virtua Partners a private equity group, said she hoped the government would mandate reporting on metrics such as the number of jobs and affordable housing units created in the zones.
“Everyone’s running to this industry,” including a lot of people without the background in real estate development, she said. “It’s pretty scary out there, some of the projects that are coming in.
Kind of, two guys in the back of a van, trying to get an Opportunity Zone project done.”
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FROM THE KRESGE FOUNDATION >
By Aaron Seybert
We should fund advocacy organizations, investigative journalism, and think tanks to increase the reputation risk for policy makers and practitioners and insist this debate continues in the public eye.
In the absence of a fully transparent market, I will remain skeptical but engaged.
Mission, Money & Markets:
What should unite Opportunity Zones backers and detractors
Editor's note: A version of this blog post also ran on Impact Alpha here. By Aaron Seybert
" . . . Depending on your ideological, political, or economic interests, you can pick the facts and examples around Opportunity Zones that most confirm your bias and dismiss the critiques you disagree with . . ."
I believe anyone who cares about this legislation producing sustainable, positive impact in communities should be asking for mandatory disclosure.
Without the knowledge of where the money came from, who raised it, and where it went, how can we possibly hope to know if this incentive is helping or hurting on the whole?
We should absolutely support the best actors to show a path forward. However, we in philanthropy should just as forcefully demand mandatory reporting at every level and remain extremely sensitive to what we lend our name to. We should fund advocacy organizations, investigative journalism, and think tanks to increase the reputation risk for policy makers and practitioners and insist this debate continues in the public eye.
In the absence of a fully transparent market, I will remain skeptical but engaged.
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FAST-FORWARD TO OCTOBER 2019 >
Investors Are Zoning Out on Opportunity Zone Funds
by Justin Bartzsch 10 Oct 2019
LINK > Click or Tap Here
Fundraising for these real estate vehicles is lacklustre as the industry awaits final regulatory guidelines from the US Treasury
> 23 December 2019
Final opportunity zone regulations have been released Stakeholders interested in maximizing tax incentives must initiate an investment prior to the end of the year.from this blog
21 December 2019IRS Issues Final Regulations on OZones + Qualified Opportunity Funds
IRS has issued final regulations on Qualified Opportunity Funds, nearly two years after the Opportunity Zone initiative was enacted into law as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act.
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There are a number of sticking points from the first two tranches of proposed regulations — many of which were discussed at the most recent IRS hearing on Qualified Opportunity Funds — that should be clarified in these final regs, including:
- Data collection and reporting, and what Treasury’s limits may be.
- Multi-asset fund exit options, and the discrepancies that exist between tax treatment at the different QOF, QOZB, and QOZBP levels.
- Whether the substantial improvement test can be conducted on an aggregate basis, as opposed to an asset-by-asset basis.
- The treatment of debt-financed distributions.
- The treatment of Section 1231 gains.
- The definition of vacant property.
- How to pair the Opportunity Zone tax incentive with real estate tax credits such as New Markets, Low Income Housing, Renewable Energy, and Historic.
Where Opportunity Zones stand, heading into 2019
The stage is set for Sean Parker’s pet project—now it’s time for the money to start rolling in
"When Trump’s tax overhaul became law a year ago, the real estate industry’s attention was focused on caps to the mortgage-interest deduction, plus state and local tax deductions—which the industry predicted would put the housing market in peril. (It didn’t.)
After the dust settled in the spring, the industry realized a hidden gem had been tucked away in the law: Opportunity Zones.
The brainchild of Silicon Valley financier Sean Parker, Opportunity Zones allow investors to obtain massive tax advantages if they invest capital gains—money made on the sale of assets like a home, a business, or a piece of art—into “distressed” areas of the country where the post-financial crisis recovery passed by.
While the provision theoretically allows investors to put money into any type of project so long as it’s in a designated zone—a business, infrastructure, whatever—most observers believe it is especially attractive to real estate developers, partly because the largest tax benefits go to those who stay invested in the zone for at least 10 years.
Advocates for the program believe this could be a game-changing community development tool.
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From Bloomberg News
Will ‘Opportunity Zones’ Help the Rich, the Poor or Both?
