Family Office Real Estate Insights, With DJ Van Keuren

Despite being ideally suited for Opportunity Zone investing, less than one-third of family offices have made an OZ investment.

DJ Van Keuren, executive director at the Family Office Real Estate Institute, joins the show to discuss why many investors have been hesitant about OZ investing, real estate market cycles, when the U.S. might enter a major recession, and opportunities for distressed asset acquisitions.

Episode Highlights

  • How family offices are ideal investors in Opportunity Zones, and possible reasons why their participation has been low.
  • The challenges in attracting capital and getting deals done in the higher interest rate environment of the last few years, and how the recent rate cut by the Fed may have a positive impact for the real estate industry.
  • DJ’s favorite books and studies to learn about real estate market cycles.
  • Why DJ believes that the U.S. may enter a major recession in 2027-2028.
  • The impact of the upcoming election and potential future government policies on Opportunity Zone investments.

Guest: DJ Van Keuren, FORE Institute

Featured On This Episode

About The Opportunity Zones Podcast

Hosted by OpportunityZones.com founder Jimmy Atkinson, The Opportunity Zones Podcast features guest interviews from fund managers, advisors, policymakers, tax professionals, and other foremost experts in the Opportunity Zones industry.

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Show Transcript

Jimmy Atkinson: Welcome to The Opportunity Zones Podcast. I’m Jimmy Atkinson. Family offices are ideally suited to be opportunity zone investors. But so far evidence shows that most ultra wealthy families have not been major OZ investors. Today, I’m joined by DJ Van Keuren.

In addition to being one of my earliest podcast guests on this show, DJ is a nationally renowned family office executive. He’s also co-managing member at Evergreen Property Partners and executive director of the Family Office Real Estate Institute, and he joins me today from Denver, Colorado, DJ. Great to see you. Thanks for joining the show. How are you?

DJ Van Keuren: I’m good, Jimmy. Thanks for having me as always, and good to see you.

Jimmy Atkinson: Good to see you. We spent some time with each other last week at the Family Office Real Estate Institute, Annual Conference at the University of Denver. We’ll talk about that a little bit later in today’s episode.

And DJ, before we get into the meat of the episode today, I just want to let you know you’ve set a record. For the most time elapsed between appearances on this show. You were guest number 3 on The Opportunity Zones Podcast, recorded way back in December 2018.

And now here you are nearly 6 years later, on episode number 315. So it’s been too long, but sincerely welcome back. I’m gonna include a link to that 1st podcast interview that we did in the show notes for today’s episode, at opportunityzones.com/podcast.

DJ, I actually think we got a lot right in that 1st discussion we had with each other way back, when but one thing that stands out is how few family offices are investing in opportunity zones. So, DJ, to start us off, can you tell me how many families have made opportunities on investments so far, according to your research at the FORE Institute? And why haven’t there been more families investing in opportunity zones?

DJ Van Keuren: Yeah. Well, as you know, we do the largest family office real estate investing study in the world. Actually, we’re about to start our 6 year. And and this is a question that we ask all the time. And this answer changed a little bit over the last couple of years.

Actually, initially, it was really because the rules and the Regs weren’t solidified. And so families were hesitant because they didn’t know, you know, where the hoop was, so that they could shoot. So that is what happened at the beginning.

And from there on, you know, it’s been right in the 30, 32% range of families that have invested. And it’s really, primarily because of the understanding of the opportunity zones and all the the particulars of opportunity zones. Occasionally you have families that are like.

I don’t want to be out for 10 years, but it’s really primarily been a really good understanding of of the benefits of OZs.

Jimmy Atkinson: Yeah, I think that’s been a huge problem, not just with family offices, but really the entire nation and the entire investment community at least is there just aren’t enough.

People aren’t enough wealthy individuals, high net worths, ultra, wealthy family offices, and even their advisors who are aware of opportunity zones. Or maybe they’re only somewhat aware of opportunity zones.

Sometimes they mistakenly think that opportunity zones aren’t around anymore, that the best benefits have expired, which certainly isn’t the case.

I’d like to tell people all the time that opportunity zones are still around through the end of 2026 at least, and most of the very best benefits are still available to investors.

As long as you trigger a capital gain prior to the end of 2026 you can still get in and have no capital gains tax after a 10 year holding period in opportunity zones. So, DJ, yeah, it’s a shame there aren’t more families investing.

I’m hopeful that an extension of the opportunity zones legislation might renew some interest in opportunity zones give the program a little more runway, allow for more time for more people, more family office executives, more families themselves to become aware of the program and its many benefits.

I do think families are ideally suited for OZ investing because they can be patient with their capital a lot of times they can withstand some liquidity, and they have the ability to withstand some of the risk of development deals DJ, a little bit of background on you.

I want to hear more about you know what what you’re up to with evergreen property partners when you started there when you started family office, real estate Institute. How did you become this nationally renowned family office executive, focused on real estate.

DJ Van Keuren: Well, I fell into the family office space like 95% of the people do. I happened to… I had moved to Denver from New York City, and I started meeting people in the area and ran across the Patriarch that had a family office, and they were in the process of raising monies to keep the company going after he retired, because they helped him create his wealth.

and and so he was going to go out and start bringing in some external capital. They asked me what they would recommend. I had all my relationships with the Goldman Sachs of the world, the Apollos, the Blackstones. And I only knew 2 families, but I did say family offices, and that’s how it all started.

And then, because I didn’t know many families, I started, you know, providing some education with a 1 page website that turned into writing a book on family office, real estate, investing, and then it went to podcasts and a magazine.

And it just continued to sort of go on itself over and over again to the point, to where you know, we because we don’t just talk about real estate. We also get into some of the other issues like governance or family councils.

It’s really impacted families from a long-term perspective. So that’s That’s how the Institute came about. And then, with evergreen, I had worked for some prominent families directly.

and then I had the chance to form a company with A with Who’s my partner now that I’ve known for, you know, 10 plus years, because a lot of families had been asking me to help with their real estate investing. So now, evergreen’s a private family office, real estate consortium.

And that’s all we do is real estate. And so you know thankfully. It’s it’s you know. A couple years back, probably just before you had mentioned, we did the 1st interview. I figured out what I wanted to do with my life, which is work with families and and real estate.

And so that’s just all I focused in on. And you know I’m a I am the biggest believer that real estate can help maintain a legacy and wealth for future generations.

Jimmy Atkinson: No, very good, and I want to back up for a minute and talk about what the heck is a family office, anyway, in case. there may be a lot of people out there listening to this or watching us on Youtube and wondering, okay, what is a family officer?

Maybe I’ve heard of that, and as a wealthy individual, as a high net worth investor who might be worth 7 figures, maybe 8 figures. You typically would work with a financial advisor, or an Ria, or some sort of wealth manager to manage your money.

But as you step up in class and step up in wealth to becoming a cent, a millionaire or a hundred 1 million dollars of net worth. DJ, I think you actually put the the floor at 250 million dollars of net worth in order to consider yourself a family office, you really need a lot more support.

Can you explain exactly what a family office is, what your definition is, and how it differs from merely a high net worth or an ultra wealthy individual.

DJ Van Keuren: Yeah. So we we put that number at 250 million dollars. And it’s not a business. It’s not a family business. It’s the business of the family.

And I actually just heard that from somebody last week at the conference, and I and I really loved what I heard because it’s it’s all about the management of your money and your overall planning that deals with not only this generation but future generations.

And it’s it’s, you know, the amount of money to create. That type of wealth happens once in a lifetime. Unfortunately, 70% of families lose their wealth by the second generation and 90% by the 3rd generation.

And so the family office is is really there in order to put together family councils, or you know, the the plans in place, whether it’s governance or whatnot, so that that money can go on for the future. And it’s not just investment component.

But it’s also everything else, from tax planning to to estate planning. Sometimes, if they’re large enough they’ll even help with Bill pay, or they’ll take care of the jets.

You know, but they’re just strictly focused on the family’s well-being for the long term.

Jimmy Atkinson: And a lot of times, families who accrue vast amounts of wealth. centimillionaire status, 100 million dollars or more, 250 million dollars or more. Maybe they step up and become billionaires. They may not have necessarily earned that wealth through real estate investments.

They may have earned it through some other type of business venture.

And so they they come into all this wealth, and they want to put together an investment portfolio and an estate plan and a tax planning strategy and a family council, and one big component of investing when you become that wealthy is to diversify into non-correlating alternative assets, real estate being the 800 pound gorilla in that asset class.

Right? But they may not have the experience with real estate. They may not have built their wealth in real estate, and that’s why it’s important to have the right executives the right advisors in place. Am I on the right track? There.

DJ Van Keuren: Yeah, you are on the right track. And and you know, real estate is the second greatest area of wealth creation after the main area that they created their wealth and the business that they created their wealth. But it’s it’s yeah.

It’s making sure that they they’re allocating properly. And they’ve sort of tied all the bills, and unfortunately, that doesn’t happen that much. And you know, you can see in the press of various people very prominent people that have died without having any plans in place.

And then the family gets involved, and we all have issues at some point in time. Whether it’s an aunt, uncle, brother, sister, cousin, you know where there’s a little infighting of some sort. Well, you add a couple more zeros, and it becomes, you know. quite. It can become quite contentious.

Jimmy Atkinson: Yeah, becomes much higher stakes when you add a few zeros onto the end of someone’s net worth. Right?

Well, I want to shift gears and talk about the current macro environment because we got big news from the Federal Reserve last week at their meeting they decided this would happen during the middle of our conference in at the University of Denver, DJ.

The Fed dropped the Fed Funds rate by 50 basis points last week. It was the 1st rate drop in over 4 years. So, DJ, how big was this move?

And what impact do you think it’ll have on real estate investing.

DJ Van Keuren: It’s a big move, because when interest rates kept going up and up and up, it started causing a lot of challenges. There’s a significant, I think 3 trillion dollars over the next couple years of of notes and mortgages that are coming due.

And for all those people that were saying, I’m going to refinance at a 4 and a quarter, and all of a sudden. Now it’s a 6 and a quarter. Well, now they have, you know, negative leverage where they don’t have enough money to pay the debt, and so.

By having it lower, not just a quarter point, but a half a point could actually end up helping a lot of those people that we’re on the verge of. What do I do? Or we’re getting to a lot of trouble to help them, you know.

be able to refinance and hold on these properties instead of having to do capital calls, or put more equity into it. And it also, you know, it also gives a sign of of hope in many regards, with with investors as a whole. Right? Because they’re like, that’s a good sign. We can borrow more money.

Of course we do have the Presidential election coming up, but it was big. It was pretty big. A lot of people didn’t think it was going to be that much, but it was.

Jimmy Atkinson: The 2 trillion dollars, wall of debt kind of staring down at Us. Commercial real estate and the Us.

Economy in general, quite the challenge to overcome, for a lot of folks who may not have expected rates to be this high at this point in the game they got a little bit too used to the Zerp or 0 interest rate policy that we had had for over a decade in the United States.

So you know, getting deals done, and raising capital over the last couple of years has been pretty challenging. What challenges have you had to overcome over the past couple of years? DJ, and do you think this drop in interest rates with it’s forecasted?

We’re going to get at least one or 2 more interest rate drops before the end of the year as well. Do you think? How much do you think that’s going to help moving forward.

DJ Van Keuren: I think it’s going to help a lot in the sense where families particularly have been sort of building up dry powder to invest, and that’s for twofold one, not knowing really which way which way things are going to go, but also to take advantage of some potential distress that’s coming up now, if they continue to decrease interest rates, then that distress is, gonna you know, get smaller and smaller.

But is but on the other side it’s going to create confidence, to go back into the market and to invest again.

Jimmy Atkinson: Could the distress be advantageous to families or wealthy investors with enough dry powder, if they can come in as rescue capital if they can come in and and set the terms of of rescue capital, or potentially acquire assets that you know pennies on the dollar.

DJ Van Keuren: That’s where the real wealth is made. you know, buying, buying, distress, buying opportunities, buying low because you want to sell high. The 1st patriarch I worked for. He had probably about a hundred 50 million, I think, and and during the recession, just over those 2, 3 years.

he turned that into about 450 million. And that’s because. you know, you you just had deals everywhere. Now.

One of the things you.

Jimmy Atkinson: A lifetime to build up 150 million, and then.

DJ Van Keuren: That’s right. Within 3 years.

Jimmy Atkinson: Triple.

DJ Van Keuren: That’s right. Yeah. And and this is when you know the money’s made. Unfortunately, a lot of people get scared when we go into a recession. Families did that where they waited until things were starting to improve, and then they invested.

Well, they missed out a lot of that uptick and you know, one of the one of the things I had mentioned. I’ve been saying this for 5, 6 years is that you know we’re not going to see a real, a recession from a real estate perspective until about ’27-’28.

And so we are. There’s still going to be some uptick, but then we are going to start going the other way. And that’s when people really need to be ready for that, because that’s opportunity.

Jimmy Atkinson: I remember talking to you at some conference a few years ago. DJ. And we were, I think, we were still kind of in a covid environment. The economy was kind of tilting downward from the pandemic, and you were telling me that it looked like we had a recession on the horizon.

But you were telling me, Jimmy, I don’t think we’re going to hit a recession until I think you said 2026 at that time or 2027, and I thought, I don’t know this guy. What is he talking about? Aren’t we about to hit a recession any day now? But I think, to your credit. You were right.

I think maybe we hit like a very small mini recession during Covid, but we bounced out of it very quickly. It wasn’t a true deep recession. So explain to me your math and your thinking about why we may not get a recession until 2027, or 2028, I think, is what you’re forecasting now.

DJ Van Keuren: Yeah. And and you know, a lot of people thought that the stress would come with Covid. But Covid was was a black swan. There’s had no idea. and it was about a year year and a half that we lost. That’s why you remember correctly, I said, ’26-’27.

Now it’s ’27-’28, because we lost that time, you know, during Covid. And and that’s why I pushed it ahead a year. But you can go back 250 years in the Us. The Uk. And Australia and real estate runs in 18 year cycles, and there’s about 7 years it goes up.

It comes down a little bit for a number of months, and then it goes back up for another 7, and then we start going into a downturn and a recession. And it’s been like that for clockwork, I mean.

Unfortunately it. It’s all based upon people’s emotions for the most part, that we continue to continues to happen over and over again. You know you come out of a recession. Banks aren’t lending. People aren’t buying, but a lot of the inventory burned off, and then the banks start loosening up.

People start investing, they start developing. We start getting more product to the market. And then, you know, you end up getting to the point where everybody starts coming in to be a developer.

They’ve never seen a downturn like we hadn’t since 2012, and everybody gets all excited because they have made a lot of money, and then it gets to the point where you have overbuilding, and then you have banks start lending more, and it’s just a vicious cycle.

And that’s where we’re coming to the tail end of that. Now.

Jimmy Atkinson: And so if you are a high net worth individual investor, you’re an ultra wealthy individual, or you’re a family office and ultra wealthy centimillionaire or billionaire family.

What should you be doing right now to prepare for this recession that you predict may hit the Us in 2027, or 2028.

DJ Van Keuren: Well, I’ll tell you one of the biggest things you want to make sure, and this is where a lot of people get in trouble that they don’t realize that if you invest into a fund and the fund has a limited period of time, let’s say 5 or 6 years, they might have an extension of one or 2 more years.

But those funds, whether it’s institutional or just private. if it if we’re going into a recession in 27, and they have to sell.

They’re going to end up selling at a downturn. So any investments that’s being made today, you want to make sure that it’s got a little tail on it so it can be there for a long time. And opportunity zones is a great example, because it’s 10 years. And you’re gonna you’re gonna get through it.

And it’s gonna be like, well, I can’t do anything, anyway, which is which is the best thing to protect yourself from right instead of getting the money, get trying to get access to the money. So that’s 1 thing is still, take advantage of these OZs, especially because we’re going to go through.

You’re not going to have to divest. The other thing, too, is to pay attention where things are going, and start building up dry powder more than anything. If you need to get comfortable by reading different books about cycles or whatnot, do that?

Because once again, that’s when the real wealth is made. Once we start going into a recession, and a little time thereafter is when you want to really start buying, and that’s when the real discounts come.

Jimmy Atkinson: Any books or speakers or authors that you recommend when it comes to researching more about real estate cycles.

DJ Van Keuren: Yeah. So the 1st book I read which actually had helped me, I back in 0 3. When I decided to get into real estate. I came back from Asia, and I put together what was going to be the 1st single family reit, and one of the books I read was timing the real estate market.

and it was by a gentleman out of Dallas. and I read that, and it actually helped me sell before we went into the recession. So that’s 1 that’s a very easy book to read.

If you really want to dig into. You know, a book that’s like gone with the wind that’s just huge. There is the life of banking and real estate, which is great, but it’s very. It’s a big, thick reed as a whole. And so that’s from one end of the spectrum to the other.

A lot of them talk about the same thing with the various parts of where we are in the cycle. Dr. Mueller has that information he talks about in his quarterly reports about where we are in the cycle based on property, type and location.

But it’s really, you know, trying to look at historically and seeing any book that talks about what’s happened in the past. You’ll see it. You’ll see the same kind of things that keep happening over and over again.

Jimmy Atkinson: Very good. Well, let’s shift gears again. I want to talk about what you’re doing in the industry right now, particularly through evergreen property partners. Could you tell me a little bit more about evergreen property partners who’s involved?

I think you referred to it as a real estate? Excuse me, a family office consortium, and all you do is real estate investing. What kind of investing are you doing?

What’s your investment strategy, and what kind of tax advantage structures have you put together under that evergreen property partners, umbrella.

DJ Van Keuren: Yeah. So so we’ve had. We’ve been doing this for a number of years. Now, I do have a partner who’s just brilliant. That’s a part of of evergreen itself. And we focused on some industrial. There’s a couple different industrial types we really liked and some workforce housing.

And, in fact, one of the best deals I know. We’ve talked about it in the past. It’s basically 400 square foot mobile homes and or modular houses in a mobile home park environment where we’re building to a 10 cap. That’s we have…

Jimmy Atkinson: Down in I think that’s the one down in Houston. Is that right?

DJ Van Keuren: That’s right. Yeah, yeah. And actually, it’s such a good deal that it attracted another 250 million from an institution to come in. Which is great, because with the way loans have been going, we can now pay cash.

And and you know, so we’re looking at a 13% unlevered return, which is pretty risk free from from that perspective. But we haven’t touched any multifamily for the exact reason of where we are today, and and some of the things that are happening with the multifamily.

But we are going to be going into multifamily looking for these opportunities.

And that’s going to be through the Evergreen Legacy Fund, which it has a structure called the Master Tenancy Structure, which we’ve been working on for well over 5 years. And we’re actually partnering with Kent Swigg from the Swig family. Their family found the Fairmount hotels.

They’re pretty prominent. They own quite a number of real estate businesses. and it’s specifically there long term to create generational wealth and to maintain generational wealth and legacy.

And you know one of the things we were talking about the other day, too, is that although you can invest through a 1031 exchange, you can contribute a property, or you can do cash.

I think there’s an opportunity to take advantage of the OZ opportunity, and then it rolls into this so that once you come out without any capital gains, it gets reinvested in this, and our returns are about a 10 times multiple of a regular taxable investment. So it’s pretty significant.

Jimmy Atkinson: Yeah, tax efficiency is king when it comes to investments like this, because it’s not about what you make. It’s about what you keep after, after Uncle Sam gets his hands on everything right and the States as well.

Well, let’s talk about the family Office Real Estate Institute I mentioned near the top of the show that I just spoke there last week at the University of Denver at your annual conference. It was an incredible event that you put on. DJ, it blew me away.

I mean some of the speakers that were there were incredible. We had Tom Handler, who is an attorney to the stars basically give an executive ed course on tax and estate planning for family offices.

Josh Kanter presented on family office governance. We had Andrew Pitcairn, a member of the Pitcairn family present as well. Jeffrey Fisher gave a presentation on cap rates. DJ, you concluded the day with a presentation on recent developments and trends and headwinds, and you talked a little bit about your recession prediction for 2027, and 2028. In my not so humble opinion I really enjoyed the part on opportunity zones.

That was the 45-minute OZ presentation that I gave to the group there. But tell us a little bit more about that event that you had last week.

And if any of our listeners missed it, you know, why should they attend next year? Potentially tell us more about the FORE Institute who’s in it, and what is it? Exactly.

DJ Van Keuren: Yeah. So the FORE Institute came out of that story I was telling you earlier where it just sort of started building on itself, right similar to what you’ve done with various companies.

You sort of you learn, or you have an opportunity to go to the next level or develop something new right.

And so it grew into doing podcasts, the Quarterly Family office, real estate, magazine doing video interviews, doing the largest annual real estate, investing study for family offices out there.

And then we we put on an investment forum which is specifically there for families to look at investment opportunities. That’s why they’re there. And then I got asked to start an executive education program at the University of Denver. which we’re independent now.

But we have professors from Harvard and Wharton University, Chicago and industry. People like you had mentioned Tom. And we should talk to you, too, about talking about some OZ stuff which would be great.

And and then we had our. We have our annual conference, which was, this was the second year that we did it.

and what we do, which is a little different than other conferences is that there are sponsors, but they’re not going to be on stage necessarily, and unless it’s something beneficial for the content. You know, we do have a no sales policy.

Because it’s all about learning and networking and getting to know some great people. So we had about 30 families or so, and then we had, you know, some others like yourself that was there. So we probably had a room about 55 people or so. It’s small people love it being small.

And you know information that the best thing I’ve gotten out of this year and last year is when people say I learned things I didn’t expect I was gonna learn that I had no idea. and which is pretty cool because we not just. We don’t just talk about real estate issues.

But we also talk about some of those big family issues. And you mentioned Andrew Pickard quite a story for his family. How big it was, and you know, 600 family members, and and where they came from, and the problems they’ve had and how they dealt with things.

And so it’s a little bit different than some of the the conferences we’ve attended together or we’ve seen. And then we had the executive education class that we taught that you mentioned the 1st thing on the 1st day.

Which a lot of people appreciated as well.

Jimmy Atkinson: Yeah. Well, speaking for myself, I did learn some things I didn’t think I would learn, and I met a lot of interesting people. I didn’t expect to meet necessarily, and would not have met, if not for that FORE Institute Annual Conference. And yeah, you’re exactly right. It wasn’t salesy.

There’s no booths or anything you got to go to. There’s no swag really to speak of. Oh, we did get a gift bag from from your Institute, I should mention with some really good beverages in it, too. So thank you for that. But it’s it’s really all about education, learning.

And getting to know other folks in the industry, so I had a great time, and I hope I can come back again sometime soon. DJ, well, we’re running low on time. DJ, but before we go, can you tell my audience of investors and family offices? Where can they go if they want to learn more about?

1st of all, evergreen property partners, and then, second of all, the family office, real estate, institute.

DJ Van Keuren: So the website for us at evergreen is simply evergreenpropertypartners.com. The Institute is FORE.institute. It’s not.com. So FORE. For Family Office Real Estate dot Institute. So FORE.institute. For myself, you can go to DJVanKeuren.com for additional information.

And I really suggest people to take a look at the Institute, because there’s a lot of very, very valuable resources to pull from.

And, in fact, we need to talk to get some, you know. Start getting some OZ stuff up there because there are changes either happening or we’re coming to the end like you’ve talked about before, you know, a couple years away. But it’s there.

It’s a resource, and it’s it’s It’s a great place to gather information and learn from others.

Jimmy Atkinson: Yeah, I’d love to provide more opportunities on resources for your group at the Forer Institute. And you’re right. I think you know, we’re coming into an election season. But no matter the outcome of the election. I think opportunity zones will be important.

If Trump gets elected President, I expect Opportunity Zones have a very good chance of getting extended. potentially renewed, reauthorized for another 9 or 10 year run with new census tracts, so it would just receive a lot of momentum, a lot more news coverage, and and, I think just more interest from investors over the next several years and beyond.

If Kamala Harris gets elected, I think there’s probably less likely chance that opportunity zones get extended, and we could be…

DJ Van Keuren: Really?

Jimmy Atkinson: Really! Looking down at the end of yeah, really, there really could be looking down at the end of the opportunity zones program toward the end of 2026. So I think in that case I might say, well, this is your last chance, potentially for quite a while, maybe forever.

So that’s kind of how I’m looking at opportunity zones depending on the outcome of the election. That’s a simplified version. It depends on the House and the Senate as well. But we’ll we’ll come to know in due time here, DJ.

DJ Van Keuren: You know, I wanna I do want to say one thing that we were starting to talk about before, and I want to make sure I bring this up. We’re we’re you’re asking me about why families haven’t invested to the amount.

And I don’t know if I was talking to you about it or somebody else the other day. But everybody thinks of real estate. They just think of real estate investments and and whatnot where being able to have a business in an OZ. Is absolutely huge.

Jimmy Atkinson: Oh, yeah.

DJ Van Keuren: People don’t. A lot of families don’t understand that which, if they’re going to expand a business, hey? Look at the OZ to do that because of those benefits. And you know, I think that’s 1 of the things that’s missing.

Because all you see, primarily 90% of the time, 95% of the time is real estate and the OZ. But there’s a lot more benefits than that and other ways that you can use that area.

Jimmy Atkinson: Yeah, there absolutely are. Businesses are probably the better use case for a capital gains tax incentive where you can have a unicorn with a 10 x 100 x 1,000 x or more return. That’s a lot of capital gains tax liability that you’re saving on.

You don’t really hit that big of a grand slam home run with a real estate investment. You’ll have a nice return, you know. You’ll save yourself quite a bit of money on taxes with real estate. Don’t get me wrong, but it’s it’s that incubated startup business that could grow into something enormous.

The example that I oftentimes threw out at the beginning of the opportunity Zones program in 2018 was, could you imagine if Google had been started in an opportunity zone as a qualified opportunity zone business.

How impactful that would have been for people exiting that business after a 10 year hold. So DJ, it’s been a pleasure talking with you today for my listeners and viewers. Our show notes will be available on our website at opportunityzones.com slash.

Podcast they will have links to all of the resources that DJ and I discussed on today’s episode. And please be sure to subscribe to us on Youtube or your favorite podcast listening platform to always get the latest episodes. DJ. Thanks again so much. It was a pleasure seeing you today.

DJ Van Keuren: Jimmy. Thanks so much again. Keep up the great work.

Jimmy Atkinson: Thank you.