How does real estate innovation intersect with Opportunity Zones? How can Opportunity Zones catalyze business development and business investment in low income communities?

Steve Nson is founder of AnySizeDeals, a conference organizer with a focus on real estate innovation. Their upcoming AnySizeDeals Festival of Real Estate Innovation event will focus on the innovation that is transforming the real estate industry.

Click the play button above to listen to my conversation with Steve.

Episode Highlights

• An overview of PropTech, and how it helps a range of stakeholders invest in and operate real estate.
• Why adoption of technology has historically been slow in the real estate space, and how that is changing in a post-COVID world.
• Where the intersections exist between PropTech and Opportunity Zones, and the appeal of Opportunity Zones to startup founders.
• The importance of engaging residents of Opportunity Zone when funding property and business development.
• The breakdown of OZ funding to date, and why this historical pattern may indicate an opportunity for operating businesses.
• The trends emerging in the PropTech industry in the remainder of 2021 and beyond.
• How the “return to work” decisions being made by large and small companies will impact property owners and technology providers.

Featured on This Episode

• Steve Nson on LinkedIn
• AnySizeDeals
• September 2020 OZ data from Novogradac
• View Smart Windows
• Dream Las Vegas OZ Project

Industry Spotlight: AnySizeDeals Week 2021

Founded in 2015 as a platform to connect real estate marketplace participants, AnySizeDeals emphasizes face-to-face meetings through their annual conference events. Their AnySizeDeals Week 2021 event coming to Las Vegas in September will focus on the innovation that is transforming the real estate industry.

Learn More About AnySizeDeals:

• Visit AnySizeDealsWeek.com
• Use promo code OpportunityDb to save $100.

About the Opportunity Zones Podcast

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

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Show Transcript

Jimmy: Welcome to “The Opportunity Zones Podcast.” I’m your host Jimmy Atkinson. And joining me once again today to discuss real estate technology and how it’s emerging in a post-COVID environment, and of course, we’ll also talk a little bit about Opportunity Zones, is the founder of AnySizeDeals, a conference organizer with a focus on real estate innovation, Steve Nson is here joining me today. Steve, thanks for joining and welcome to the podcast.

Steve: Hi, Jimmy. Thank you so much for having me back on the show. It’s always a pleasure.

Jimmy: Yeah. Absolutely, Steve. So in case our listeners out there may not have listened to our first episode together that we did, I think it was February of last year, February of 2020. You were organizing a large real estate conference in Las Vegas in September. It’s the AnySizeDeals Festival of Real Estate Innovation. It’s coming to Las Vegas, the Venetian Hotel, immediately following Labor Day weekend. I believe it’s September 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th. Is that right?

Steve: Correct.

Jimmy: And we’ll talk about that a little bit later in the podcast episode. You had planned on doing this real estate innovation week in Las Vegas last September, and your episode with me that we did last February in large part was to drum up some interest in that conference. And the episode that aired was actually one of the last episodes that I aired right before COVID started shutting everything down. And so of course, your conference got canceled and the industry got thrown into some turmoil. And I think we have a lot of exciting new topics to talk about today. And we’ll get to those momentarily. But first, for those listeners who did not listen to our first episode, maybe we can just kinda briefly recap what we spoke about there and specifically what you focus on, Steve, and what your conference focuses on is real estate technology or CRETech, also known as PropTech. So could you give us like a 30,000-foot overview of what PropTech is exactly and what it means for investors and anyone else in the real estate industry?

Steve: Absolutely. So like you were mentioning, we had this big event planned for last fall and then COVID hit, we had to reschedule it for this year. So it will be taking place this year at the Venetian, September 7th through the 10th, and really, it’s about real estate innovation. So when you hear PropTech or CRETech, or RETech, it’s really about talking about technology as it relates to the built world. So any sort of software and innovation that ties into helping improve how people run, operate, sell, lease, manage real estate is all relevant. So this could be for apartment buildings, for office buildings, for retail centers, for construction, any software innovation that ties to that space is pretty much what falls into the category of PropTech. And there’s a ton of innovation happening in the space. And prior to COVID, there was always this thinking that the adoption of new technology in the real estate space was somewhat slow as compared with say, finance where there’s fintech and there’s more adoption like, for example, large banks spent a lot of money on software, on acquiring fintech startups, and competing with them. But in the real estate space it was always viewed as sort of like, a nice to have versus a have to have, at least from the perspective of the owner or the landlord. But in a post-COVID world it’s the opposite, right? Everyone is fully aware of the fact that for example, work can be done remote, apartment showings can be done remotely, signing leases, signing documents, tracking information, and tracking the air quality in your building, entry, exit, who’s using what space, how to reconfigure space, etc. All of this stuff can be automated, and more importantly, it creates a competitive advantage for the company, so the owners or operators that adopt all this technology, right?

So now you go from a place where if you have the software, if you’re one of these innovators, it was like the hard sales pitch to convince owners and operators to adopt your software. In a COVID world or in a world where everything can be shut down because of the pandemic, now the owners and operators are a lot more open to the idea of trying new software tools because they’re fully aware of how the world can radically change, but even if things are shut down, there still is another way for you to operate and do business. So that’s kind of one of the positive side effect of COVID is that it supports a lot of the real estate industry, to be more appreciative or more interested in new technology. And this is sort of why our event is so important because it allows traditional owners and operators of real estate to be in the same room with all these innovative companies. And if you’re one of these startups that’s building or creating new tech, you’re gonna have the opportunity to talk to people who are really interested in what you have to offer because they’ve seen it firsthand, the value of new technology. So that kinda sums it up.

Jimmy: Oh, that’s great, and that’s really fascinating actually, that silver lining of the pandemic and our policy response to the pandemic to shut everything down and keep people away from the office, away from going out. Really, that sounds like it catalyzed a lot of progress in the PropTech industry. Maybe the PropTech industry took a five-year leap forward. I’m just making that number up, but something like that where the adoption was slow to begin with. Maybe we’re a little bit farther along now than you would have guessed 18 months ago.

Steve: Absolutely, absolutely. And that’s sometimes what happens with these unfortunate situations, right? Because obviously, it was unfortunate what happened with COVID, but the opposite end of it is that it just forces people to reassess what it is that they need versus don’t need. It’s like, we have this whole debate with a lot of these large companies. Like, for example, Apple wants all their employees are back to the office in September, if you want to work remotely, you need, like, a special approval from your manager, etc., etc. Other companies like Facebook, they’re more flexible, Twitter, you can work remote if you want. So this whole disconnect, right? Apple says their innovative culture requires collaboration, people have to be there in-person. Other companies are like, “Well, during the pandemic when everything was locked down, our employees were still productive.” Right? “Being remote allows us to recruit people from all over the world, allows people to have more balanced lives.” So we don’t really know, truth be told, what’s going to work in the long term, right? It’s one of those things where we just have to wait and see. Does it mean Apple certainly is gonna lose a lot of competition to other major tech companies because they’re not as flexible with their employment or it’s just the allure of working for Apple is so big? Again, we don’t know. And this is one of those things where you talk about the future of work and if you’re an office building owner it is a big concern for you, right, because these tech companies are big employers.

So obviously, you want people to come back to the office. For example, here in New York City, when the city started slowly reopening and people were allowed to go back to the office, for a lot of office buildings, they were like, 10% occupied. And this is when people can go back to the office, but the employees didn’t wanna come back to the office. So companies have to figure out a way to incentivize their people to come back. Again, these are some of these challenges going forward where people really have to think through what the best options are, and these are conversations again that we’re going to be having in Vegas when we’re talking about things that affect the built world, things that affect the way we live, the way we work. There’s a big conversation around that as well.

Jimmy: Sure. Of course, there is. Definitely. Yeah. That return to work concept is a little bit in doubt still I think in terms of, are people coming back to work or not? My thinking is, my opinion is that eventually we’re gonna return to normal. People are going to return to work. I think just my opinion again, I think it’s easier to have those types of innovative collaborations with people in-person, in a physical setting. So I hope to see companies return to work and come back to work as soon as they can. I wanna tie in Opportunity Zones now, Steve. I know that some of your conference, that first day in particular, that Tuesday will be focused on Opportunity Zones. In fact I’m gonna help moderate one or two Opportunity Zone panels that day. We’ve lined up some great speakers. What do you see in terms of Opportunity Zones, how PropTech is intersecting with that tax incentive?

Steve: Well, in terms of Opportunity Zones, at this stage it’s still very early in terms of the intersection, but there is potential opportunity, right, in Opportunity Zones, because initially it was, partly, it was tied in to real estate. So encouraging people to invest or build, or develop real estate in underserved communities, but there was also an incentive to fund businesses in those communities. So it could be a PropTech business, it could be any business. There is an opportunity there, but unfortunately, we haven’t seen as much funding or maybe it just hasn’t been as publicized. I’m not aware of it, but there hasn’t been as much funding going towards businesses in Opportunity Zones or people being incentivized to fund businesses in Opportunity Zones. Because for it to really work for example, from a PropTech standpoint, if you’re an early stage company, you receive a lot of funding from angel investors or venture capitalists, right? So a lot of times they’re investing based on how big they think your business can be, how successful you’re going to be, what your attraction is, what the team is, etc. They don’t necessarily invest based on geographic benefit. So they don’t necessarily invest based on, you’re located in this part of the city, although that in itself can be an incentive because based on where you’re located, your business can serve certain needs within that geographic location and how many stable or geographic locations exist throughout the country. I’m not sure if I have the exact number, but there were like, 7,000 Opportunity Zones, designated locations. Does that sound about right, Jimmy? I haven’t checked, but…

Jimmy: I think the number is exactly 8,764. So yeah, you’re in the ballpark.

Steve: So assume 8,764, there was an argument that all of these were supposed to be underserved, underdeveloped community, some of them end up being affluent areas. Let’s say you wanna knock off even 1,000 that you say don’t exactly fit the intention of the program, you’re still left with like 7,000-plus to 8,000. In those communities, assume like we launched a business that’s funded because we’re in an Opportunity Zone, assume that we launched a business that service, that caters to people within that area. If our business succeeds and we deliver services that meet this community, our pitch could be, “Hey, there are like 7,000 other communities that would need this service.” And how many millions of people live in those communities? So now suddenly, our business is not a small business anymore. Suddenly, our business can be massive because it serves millions of people. And for the investors or the people backing us, these are the tax benefits of funding businesses in Opportunity Zones.

And I think that’s the business case that has to be made, and also we have to find businesses that can serve those communities with the ambition to go big. And once that happens, I think you see more funding in that area because part of the incentive with Opportunity Zones was really to uplift those communities. And after the murder of George Floyd, a lot of companies, large companies, small companies, fortune 500 companies, everyone said, “Hey, we want to invest more in Black people, we want to invest in more minorities, we’re gonna write these checks, we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that. We’re all about diversity and inclusion.” And I’m saying, with the Opportunity Zone setup, you do have an opportunity to do that as well because a lot of these underserved communities would benefit from it. So there’s another aspect that if businesses and people who fund businesses really thought about it, Opportunity Zones are like a tremendous opportunity for you to make money, make a difference in those communities, and help build businesses there. So I think the program, I’m a big proponent of that. I think it’s a great program, and used the right way can really make a difference.

Jimmy: I agree completely. It is a very powerful incentive tool for raising capital particularly if you’re a startup business and you’re looking for investors. If you have a startup company or even any type of operating business really, not any type of operating business, but there’s a large amount of operating businesses out there and startups out there that would be ideally suited to locate in an Opportunity Zone. Again, it’s not for everybody, but if you have a startup company, you have to ask yourself, “Why wouldn’t I locate in an Opportunity Zone?” And maybe you can answer, there are some reasons why you might not want to. But in many cases it makes sense to operate in an Opportunity Zone, just the incentives that are there and the impact that it can make in those communities. The breakdown of real estate investment through Opportunity Zones versus business investment in Opportunity Zones, I’m gonna cite a study that Novogradac published a few months ago, they track a lot of Qualified Opportunity Funds in the industry. By no means, they track every fund that would be impossible, but they track a pretty large amount of funds. I think they track roughly $16 billion worth of Qualified Opportunity Fund investment. I think it’s over 1,000 funds that they have that they’re tracking now, and according to their survey, roughly 3% of the Opportunity Zone investing is going toward operating businesses. The vast majority is going into real estate, mostly residential, commercial, and hospitality.

So that gives you an indication of how little this program is being used for operating businesses or maybe how much it’s being used for real estate and there’s reasons for that. It’s much easier to do a real estate deal as an Opportunity Zone deal. Business investing can be a little bit trickier to qualify for Qualified Opportunity Zone fund investment and stay in compliance. But if you can do it and especially if you’re starting out and you’re about to fund a company, you should ask yourself the question, “Can this be a Qualified Opportunity Zone business? Can I invest into this business or see this business with equity that could be or could take advantage of the Qualified Opportunity Zone benefits?” I think it’s a good question for you to ask. Would you agree, Steve?

Steve: Jimmy, while you were talking, I just… Two things came to mind. One, so with Opportunity Zones, yes, it’s good if you can attract companies to come in, but what would make it even better is if you could focus on the people who already live there and have them start those businesses. So in those communities are people with talent, with skills that wanna start companies, they don’t really know where to go, they don’t have to go with venture capital. It seems way too complicated for them, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have good ideas or it doesn’t mean that they can’t build businesses. They might lack the resources to do so. So if you are funding businesses and you’re located there, finding the businesses in that community itself would be great, because you do two things. One, you help the community build itself which is the intent of it anyway. And two, you’re funding businesses that provide a tax incentive for you as well.

And then the other point was when you mentioned that 97% of the funding goes to real estate. Partly it’s because with real estate, yes, you can lose money in real estate, and yes, people do lose money, but for the most part, people who’ve been investing in real estate for years, there’s like, a basic formula in terms of how they buy, or build, or construct. So for them, Opportunity Zones is just a different way of financing. So they’re not reinventing anything here. That’s just a different way of financing, right? So it’s not a hard sell.

If it’s an operating business it may or may not succeed. And let’s say it was early stage, let’s say we’re investing in a startup. A lot of startups fail. You’re gonna have a lot of losses, but the one win pays for like 10,000 losses. That’s how you have to look at it. So that could be a bit of a challenge. Now, if it’s already an existing business where you can look at with existing revenues and customers, maybe they’re profitable, you can look at what the numbers are. But a lot of times, those businesses just end up staying small. They don’t scale to become massive businesses. So that could be another reason why, let’s say the early stage investor might hesitate because their whole concept is they wanna invest in something that’s gonna be Uber, Facebook, Google. I don’t necessarily always agree that’s the end all be all, but that’s the psychology there, right? So that could be a bit of a challenge, but even with that said, I still think there’s a huge opportunity, because if 97% of the funding is going somewhere and only 3%, if you think about it, it means that’s where a lot of opportunity is, right? Because who are you competing with for the deals, for example? Not a lot of people, because they’re not even looking at it. So for all, there could be tremendous value there. It’s not a lot of competition. So you have room to work with it.

The other thing I was gonna mention is like, with a lot of government and programs, there’s a lot of lobbying involved, rules that are changed to adopt it based on their needs. Since a lot of investment has gone towards real estate and a lot of venture capitalist or investors haven’t really seen as much benefit from it, and like I was telling you earlier, in their mind, they’re not thinking there’s a geographic location benefit, right? Like, if it’s real estate based on where we own, let’s say we’re going to buy real estate in New York, if I owned real estate on Park Avenue or Fifth Avenue, or Midtown, let’s say it’s an office building, it’s a completely different valuation than if I own the same building in the Bronx, completely different valuation, right? If it’s a company, it doesn’t matter if Facebook is headquartered in San Francisco or Dubai, or South Africa, it doesn’t matter, because that’s not how people use their services. It’s not limited to geographic location, but it doesn’t mean that the person funding the business wouldn’t benefit from it.

So that’s a bit where the challenge is. And if there is a way to convince the investors that when you’re looking at it, you’re not really looking at that one geographic location, you’re looking at 8,000 locations throughout the country, and you’re looking at, “I’m gonna make this number.” Let’s say 20 million people that are within those zones, then suddenly it looks like a big business because that’s a lot of customers. So there’s a lot of need there. So if it’s framed that way, I think there’s an opportunity because if it’s only 3%, then it’s not really…then we’re just… There’s so much opportunity that’s not really being captained or taken advantage of. And obviously, this is something that we’re also gonna cover at the conference in Vegas, and there are gonna be a lot of tech companies, there are a lot of investors, a lot of real estate owners. So hopefully, there’s some magic that happens with all these talented people all in the same room, and hopefully some deals are done. That’s my pitch to the value of Opportunity Zones to people in the PropTech community and in the venture space to really think about it because there’s some opportunities there that people are not really focusing on.

Jimmy: Yeah. Absolutely, Steve. A lot to unpack from your last response there. One correction to make, you mentioned and you were just taking a stab in the dark at this, you mentioned 20 million people live in those Opportunity Zones. The number is actually estimated to be 35 million. So it’s a much larger market than you would even think. It’s very big. It’s a very large market. But yeah, getting back to the first point you’re making, countering my point, which was, “Hey, why not start a business in an Opportunity Zone or move a business into an Opportunity Zone?” Your point was, “Hey, there’s already people in these low income Opportunity Zones who are starting their own businesses. If you’re an investor, go find those.” I think you’re absolutely right. I think that’s a really good distinction and a really good point, Steve.

And there’s definitely a lot of really good opportunity out there either way to take advantage of the Opportunity Zone incentive program, whether you’re doing real estate, which is location based, right? Where of course, to your point, a Midtown Manhattan building is gonna have much different valuation than the same building in upper Manhattan or the Bronx, I guess is what your example was. And then for operating business, for a startup company or a tech company, or a PropTech company, or whatever the business is, oftentimes especially if you’re location agnostic, it doesn’t really matter where you’re located, it doesn’t matter if you’re up in the Bronx or lower Manhattan. There’s no difference whatsoever. I completely agree with that too. I think it’s a really good point to make.

Steve: For the investor funding, but for the investor putting in the capital, there can be a difference.

Jimmy: Makes a huge difference, of course.

Steve: That’s what I’m trying to get at. They get it differently.

Jimmy: Right. That’s right. So let’s wrap up here in the next few minutes, but before I let you go, I got a couple more questions for you. One, I wanted to know and we’ve already touched on this a little bit, maybe you can just recap, what kind of trends do you see in the PropTech industry unfolding over the rest of this year and into 2022 and beyond? What should we keep an eye out for?

Steve: For me it’s always hard to predict trends in the future… I think overall, I can say adoption technology is gonna become a lot more prevalent. It’s not even going to be viewed as like, a different part of the company. It’s just going to be viewed as how you do your business from how you track your information to how you communicate with your vendors, with your clients, etc. It’s going to be just be a part of how people do business. It’s not going to be viewed as like, a separate thing, because technology… In our personal lives we use technology for everything. So it just makes sense that in the business setting as well it’s the exact same thing and that’s kind of how I view PropTech adoption when it comes to the real estate space. Because there’s a huge incentive, for example, people who own office buildings to really think about how they’re operating their office building, how they’re utilizing the space.

For example, we work although some people don’t really consider it PropTech because it wasn’t really a tech company, but they were somewhat innovative and some people might argue that too in terms of how they approach leasing, right? So historically, if you signed an office lease that’s a longer term lease, it’s gonna be 10 years or so, and we work with sign a longer term lease and then they’ll turn around and sublease it to people for 6 months or a month, or whatever it may be, and they build a billion dollar business off of that. So if you were an office building owner, you don’t need a WeWork to tell you that maybe you should have a portion of your leases that are short-term leases because there’s a big segment of the market that can’t commit to long-term leases. There’s a huge segment of the market that are self-employed or they’re early stage companies, and they don’t know if they’re gonna have a business five years from now. Now if the business grows, then they’re growing some more space. So as the landlord, we work of course for landlords that we think there…

So for example, less entries into buildings. Some people were already adopting that. With COVID it makes a lot more sense because we wanna reduce the amount of touching and grabbing, and holding that we do, but also it helps you track activity in the building. For example, corporate real estate. So people who work for large companies, whose role it is to design the office space or determine, like, who sits where with the whole social distancing? People wanna be remote and they rethink the whole concept of how many people need to be in this office every day, and if they are in the office, what are they using the office for? How many conference rooms do we need? Does everybody need to have a desk? Because if everybody doesn’t come every day, then people can rotate desks, then we’re more efficient and more effective in how we use our space. People are thinking about the carbon footprint. So now they’re thinking about how we’re using the utilities in the building. So having centers and systems to track who’s on what floor when the lights go on and off.

For example, there’s a company called View. So their thing is you don’t really need blinds in your office buildings. They have these glasses that are kinda reflective. So based on the sunlight coming in or where it’s facing, and it’s just the reflection in the room, and they have all these studies that show that it impacts how people feel about working in the space, etc. Long story short, that company went public, gets backed, a few months ago they’re doing really well. And I’m sure the business has really picked up because not everybody wants to be more efficient in terms of how they run and operate their buildings. So those are all the things that I think people are seriously gonna be thinking about going for it. And for example, if you own an apartment building when everybody was locked down, people need spaces to work. So if you’re building a new apartment building, clearly you’re gonna make sure you have some space in your building, especially if it’s a luxury building where people can work from home. It’s an amenity, right? Like, people used to always have a gym in buildings. It almost feels like not having a space for adults to go sit down and work if they’re really thinking through like, our needs going forward, right? Because even if everybody goes back to work full-time, there’s still gonna be a huge component of people that either work remote or they’re self-employed, or they wanna go to an office a couple of days a week and the rest of the time they wanna work in an apartment. So again, that’s another way.

So if you’re a multifamily owner, you’re already thinking how you’re creating space, right? And even if you’re a home builder, right? The homes that you’re building, you have to think of what’s more efficient assuming there’s another lockdown, everybody is stuck at home, mom and dad need their own space, etc. So it’s really about rethinking how people utilize space. I guess I finally come to the answer, basically the short answer is, going forward, everybody is forced to rethink of how we utilize space, whether you’re building office buildings, apartment buildings, shopping centers, anything that involves real estate or being built, you have to rethink of how people use it, and the most efficient and effective way. That’s kind of what the summary is.

Jimmy: No, that’s great, Steve. A lot to keep an eye on going forward in terms of real estate innovation and PropTech as well. I wanna focus now on your upcoming conference for the last few minutes of our episode today. So a couple of years ago you hosted the AnySizeDeals Opportunity Zone Summit in Brooklyn. It was at the…

Steve: Williamsburg Hotel.

Jimmy: That’s right. It was at the Williamsburg Hotel. The keynote speakers at that event included, Steven Witkoff and Anthony Scaramucci, you had Treasury Official Dan Kowalski there as well. I was there. I wasn’t a speaker. I was in the audience just soaking up all the knowledge. It was great. What do you have in store for this upcoming conference? It’s the AnySizeDeals Week at the Venetian in Las Vegas September 7th through 10, 2021. You’re also referring to it as The Festival of Real Estate Innovation. Tell us a little bit about what’s gonna unfold there and who are some of the speakers you have lined up.

Steve: Absolutely. And really thank you for giving me a chance to break it down for the audience. So it’s called AnySizeDeals Week, The Festival of Real Estate Innovation, because in my mind what I really want to touch on is everything that’s innovative or transforming the real estate industry. So we’re taking four days because each day we really wanna focus on different aspects of real estate innovation. For example, on day one, we’ll cover Opportunity Zones, we’ll cover a lot about the multifamily space and the tech innovation in that space. On day two, it’s more about the office sector and the future of work, and the changes happening in terms of where people work, what the requirements are, and if you’re an office building owner, how you have to rethink about the services that you provide. On day three, we go towards more of the financing aspect of it, we’ll touch on blockchain technology, we cover spec, and of course, venture capital because it’s a big component of investing in the PropTech ecosystem in the real estate space. And then day four, we focus more on artificial intelligence and robotics, and have some aspects of construction, right? So in between those four great days with everything we’re covering, we also have a startup competition and awards ceremony.

In terms of the speakers, so we’re very excited. The actual mayor of Las Vegas, Mayor Carolyn Goodman is gonna be there. She’s gonna have the welcoming remarks on the first day of the event. So we’re very excited to have her there. We have a ton of great speakers. We have Alex Bhathal, who’s the managing partner at RevOZ Capital, and he’s also co-owner of the Sacramento Kings. He’s a big Opportunity Zone investor. They’ve done a ton of deals throughout the country. We have David Weiden, who’s the co-founder of Khosla Ventures. That’s one of the larger venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. Some of the companies they funded include Opendoor which recently went public, Roofstock, just to name a few. We also have the chief economist at Redfin who’s going to be there. We have a ton of great speakers coming along, and we’re probably gonna end up having 80 to 90 terrific speakers. It’s just very exciting. We’re really looking forward to having everybody there.

Jimmy: Yeah, it sounds like a great one. I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be there. As I mentioned, I’m gonna be moderating the OZ panel on that first day of the conference. One more name I got to drop is Bill Shopoff of Shopoff Realty Investments. He’s developing a hotel in an Opportunity Zone on the Las Vegas Strip, not too far from the Venetian. So I just wanted to name drop him. He was a guest on my podcast a few weeks ago as well. So anyways, yeah, it sounds like a great event. Steve, I’m really looking forward to it. Can you tell our listeners how they can learn more about you, more about the event, and how they can purchase tickets and register for the event?

Steve: Absolutely. So they can go to anysizedeals.com or anysizedealsweek.com, and all the information is available there. They can learn about the events, who’s speaking, different panels, etc. In terms of me, I’m listed on the website as well, but obviously, I’m on LinkedIn, Steve, last name, N-S-O-N. You can me find me on LinkedIn and I’m sure you’re gonna have a link in the podcast, for anybody interested in reaching out or contacting me, we still have a few sponsorships spots available for people interested in sponsoring or exhibiting too. Overall, it’s gonna be a tremendous event, super excited. We’re happy that you’re involved with the event as well and look forward to you moderating, and it’s terrific. It’s exciting and we’re really looking forward to hosting everyone in September at the Venetian.

Jimmy: Excellent. And for our listeners out there, Steve and I have come to an arrangement whereby podcast listeners can save $100 on registration if you use the promo code OpportunityDb at checkout. That’s OpportunityDb and you can use that promo code to save $100. Visit anysizedealsweek.com to learn more and use that promo code. And of course, as always, I will have show notes for today’s episode on the Opportunity Zones Database website. You can visit at opportunitydb.com/podcast, and there you’ll find links to all of the resources that Steve and I discussed on today’s show. I’ll be sure to link out to his social media accounts that he just mentioned as well as anysizedealsweek.com, and I’ll have more information on the special offer available for podcast listeners. Steve, thanks again for joining me today. It’s been a pleasure.

Steve: Always. Thank you so much, Jimmy.

Jimmy: That’s it for our show today. A huge thank you to you, our listener. If you liked this episode, please rate and review us on iTunes. “The Opportunity Zones Podcast” is produced by the Opportunity Database. Visit opportunitydb.com to learn more about Opportunity Zones and Opportunity Zone fund investing. You can learn how to subscribe to this podcast and read more about today’s guest in the show notes by visiting opportunitydb.com/podcast, and we’ll be back soon with another episode.