Excerpted from Business Observer story.
“What is the biggest misconception that investors and others have about Opportunity Zones?”
JOE RUBIN
Director, Multifamily Investment Sales
Franklin Street
Plantation
The biggest misconception that I’ve come across is that people are generally confused about how to qualify for an Opportunity Zone tax deferment, or how or if taxes are to be paid over a five-, seven- or 10-year period. A lot of intricate rules regarding Opportunity Zones have just been published pertaining to requirements and a few investment firms, like Starwood comes to mind, have been laser-focused on Opportunity Zones and have hired attorneys to really drill into what the regulations are and the investments that can be made.
They tend to understand the rules really well, but for the most part, many investors just want to invest but they don’t understand a lot about how to qualify. And it is pretty involved; a lot has to be done. It’s a lot more complicated than just ‘here’s an Opportunity Zone, let’s invest here’ kind of thing. You have to show where your money that you’re investing is coming from, when you’re planning to put it in, you have to list the exact entity that is putting in the capital.
On the surface it seems simple, but when you dig into it, there are a lot of complexities. The latest regs, which came out earlier this month from the Treasury Department, they’re 189 pages, so it’s no wonder that while a lot of groups may be flirting with the idea of investing in an Opportunity Zone, few have actually done it to date. But I think that with the new regs, as people digest them, we’ll start to see deals come together more aggressively, and will have to, because investments have to be made by the end of the year.
