While some confusion with guidance around Opportunity Zones hampered the rollout of the program, it was not the only issue with the program’s start.
Mismatched expectations between buyers and sellers also torpedoed deals.
“A lot of those land and building owners are sitting there saying, ‘I’m still sitting on this property that I’ve owned for 20 years, and I’m going to cash in,’” says Steve Sharkey, a partner based in Baltimore for DLA Piper. “Or they had land and thought that they could partner with somebody. But because of the related party rules, that is very difficult to do.”
While these land and property owners had sky-high expectations, developers were underwriting deals conservatively. They were looking at the fact that investors were getting big tax benefits as a reason why they would be able to reduce their return expectations, according to Steve Polivy, chair of Akerman’s Economic Development and Incentives Practice.
“In the beginning, we were noticing a lot of buzz about the program,” Polivy says. “But deals weren’t getting done because investors were anticipating that since they were going to be investing in these Opportunity Zones, which by their reckoning were in distressed areas that they would see significantly increased returns.”
Ultimately, Polivy thinks the Opportunity Zone designation had little to do with the deals that got done.
“The deals that got done were deals that would make economic sense for an investor and the developer, whether or not there were Opportunity Zone benefits as part of the program,” Polivy says.
In early 2019, Polivy did see a lot of buzz around deals being done for projects that were already underway. “In some cases, they were already scoped out,” he says.
Eventually, a lot of the attractive deals were taken, according to Sharkey. “What was left towards the end were things in which the investment fundamentals of being in a distressed community were starting to come out,” he says. “All the easy low hanging fruit started to be absorbed.”
Derek Uldricks, president of Virtua Capital Management, admits that the demand for Opportunity Zone deals could have pushed some sponsors to get too aggressive. “I know that we went through and still go through a very rigorous process in terms of how we underwrite projects and analyze their feasibility,” he says.
Despite these mismatched expectations, many observers were pleased with the numbers for Opportunity Zones. Novogradac reported that in late April, volume in Opportunity Zones deals surpassed $10 billion.
“That’s a pretty impressive number in one year,” says Reid Thomas, Chief Revenue Officer and Managing Director at NES Financial, a JTC Company. “There’s probably a whole bunch of private investment, like family office stuff, going on top of that [what is tracked by Novogradac].”
But not everyone is as impressed. Polivy says the Novogradac numbers are “far less than what had been anticipated.”