A new report ranks the country’s top 306 counties for Opportunity Zone investments, and Austin’s Travis County is No. 1. Real estate investors and developers are raising hundreds of millions of dollars for projects in the thousands of Opportunity Zones scattered around the country.
The data highlights a major point made by developers and Opportunity Zones experts: not all zones are created equal. In South Florida, Palm Beach County -ranked 24th – is attractive for investors partly because there is a significant amount of development going on.
The area has some pockets of poverty, but also has extreme wealth nearby in Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. Some of the Opportunity Zone sites in the county are already undergoing massive redevelopment such as parts of in Delray Beach. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson recently told The Real Deal that the agency will give preference to developers who build affordable housing in Opportunity Zones.