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New York faces a 60-day window to steer renewed Opportunity Zone capital
The state must decide how to direct the next wave of Opportunity Zone funds after Congress rewrote the program, with national OZ investment tracked at $112 billion through 2024.
Commercial Observer reports that New York has just over 60 days to decide how the next decade of Opportunity Zone, or OZ, capital will be allocated after Congress rewrote the program.
The outlet says the statute helped OZ funds keep investing even when conventional equity for ground-up development retreated in 2022, because capital either had to be deployed into qualifying tracts or the tax benefit would be forfeited. It also notes OZ equity carries a mandatory 10-year investment horizon and is priced less expensively than non-tax-advantaged capital.
Commercial Observer adds that New York designated 514 census tracts as qualifying Opportunity Zones in 2018, and that the Treasury’s latest accounting puts national OZ investment at $112 billion through 2024, up from $44 billion through 2020. The outlet says New York accounted for roughly $8.2 billion of that total, behind only California and Florida.
On targeting, Commercial Observer notes critics argued the money would flow to neighborhoods that do not need it, and that in New York City some OZ investment landed in areas such as Greenpoint and Long Island City that had rezonings and momentum that predated the program. It also cites examples like Mott Haven and Gowanus, which were selected under eligibility tied to household incomes below 80 percent of area median income.