News & Insights

by Phil Jelsma and Ulrick Matsunaga

SAN DIEGO (September 25, 2025) – First introduced in 2017, the Opportunity Zone program – which offers tax incentives to investors who reinvest capital gains into designated low-income communities – was already a complicated maze of rules and requirements. Now, with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the landscape has shifted once again. The Opportunity Zone (OZ) program has been made permanent and incentives have been recalibrated – while opportunities remain, eligibility is tighter and compliance obligations more demanding.

Joint ventures (JVs) between developers, investors, and fund sponsors have long been the preferred vehicle for pooling capital into tax-advantaged Opportunity Zone investments. For stakeholders in real estate and development, this means existing JV operating agreements and deal structures may now be out of sync with the new statutory framework

Our partner Phil Jelsma, chair of our tax practice group and associate attorney Ulrick Matsunaga recently unpacked six major changes impacting JVs in Opportunity Zones – explaining why JV partners may need to reassess their strategies – in a recent article published in The Los Angeles Daily Journal and The Daily Transcript.

The full article can be read here (subscriber only).

About Crosbie Gliner Schiffman Southard & Swanson LLP (CGS3)

CGS3 is a recognized leader among a new generation of commercial real estate law firms with practice areas covering the entire commercial real estate life cycle, including finance, acquisition/disposition, entity formation, tax, construction, development, land use, leasing, distressed asset workouts and dispute resolution.  Earning a reputation as one of California’s leading commercial real estate law firms, CGS3 continues to recruit some of the state’s top real estate attorneys from both large corporate firms and senior in-house positions.  For more information, visit http://www.cgs3.com.