Topic--- Opportunity Zones

[Kip Stephens]

Opportunity Zones. As I follow NREI ( National Real Estate Investor) Experts are predicting that Opportunity Zones are going to be on the top of HMW (High-Net-Worth) Investors list with multifamily, marijuana, retail and industrial are emerging as some of the key areas to watch IN 2019. A couple questions: 1, What is a Opportunity Zone? ( Thought everything was an opportunIty zone?) 2, What is everyone’s feelings about the Marijuana area being I live in California and Arizona. Not a big fan of this issue. Just my opinion.

[Rebecca Knox]

Opportunity zones have been a recent hot topic in Milwaukee as well with commercial developers seeming to take the first leap. Excerpt from Milwaukee Biztimes:

"The Opportunity Zone program was a small piece of last year’s federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The program offers investors two benefits. First, they can defer capital gains on a previous investment if the money is reinvested into a zone until the end of 2026. Those capital gains taxes can be reduced by as much as 15 percent.

Second, taxes on capital gains from investments in the Opportunity Zones can be avoided if the investments are held for at least 10 years.

There are more than 8,700 Opportunity Zones throughout the United States. Wisconsin has 120 Opportunity Zones, with 48 in southeastern Wisconsin and 34 in the City of Milwaukee.

Portions of the near west side and south side, particularly along West National Avenue, are included, along with parts of Walker’s Point, the Menomonee Valley and a stretch of North Water Street between East Juneau Avenue and East Brady Street.

“The idea is to incentivize people to take money out of the stock market or property and invest it into specific geographic areas that are underinvested in,” said Rebecca Mitich, a partner at Husch Blackwell in Milwaukee who specializes in real estate law."