That compares with 300 private real estate funds raising a total $124 billion last year alone, the sixth consecutive year of such funds raising over $100 billion, according to Preqin. Total assets in private real estate funds reached a record $909 billion in June 2018. The money raised for the program is small potatoes compared with the existing real estate industry – and by the program’s own opportunity set, as estimated by the Economic Innovation Group, the think thank that helped create the program: it has said there’s some $6 trillion of unrealized capital gains that could be poured into these left-behind tracts of America. At the end of 2018, only 8% of the 51 U.S.-based institutional investors in real estate surveyed by Preqin in January 2019 were already invested in Opportunity Zone funds. Because the benefit is very time-sensitive, even with that confusion, managers have scrambled to construct funds and get ready. Of those 62 new funds in the market, Preqin found that 70% are run by “Emerging” managers raising their first or second funds. Investors should exercise even more caution than usual when selecting a Qualified Opportunity Fund manager.