Turn up the volume on your real estate success at Inman On Tour: Nashville! Connect with industry trailblazers and top-tier speakers to gain powerful insights, cutting-edge strategies, and invaluable connections. Elevate your business and achieve your boldest goals — all with Music City magic. Register now.
Real estate analytics and property data company Attom released a report on sales activity for 2024 in a number of government-appointed Opportunity Zones, according to a Feb. 13 statement.
Attom said that it reviewed 3,783 Zones using data from no fewer than five home sales in the fourth quarter of last year.
The report found that median single-family home and condo prices increased from the third quarter of 2024 to the fourth quarter of 2024 in 49 percent of Opportunity Zones around the country with enough data to measure,” Attom said.
Among the Zones studied, prices increased in 61 percent and median prices were up by 10 percent annually, tracking at a similar pace to typical properties outside of areas benefitting from tax subsidies, according to Attom’s research.
“That scenario has held regardless of whether the housing market has seen limited, moderate or robust gains,” the company said.
In 49 percent of Zones studied, the median price of single-family homes and condos increased between Q3 and Q4 and stayed the same or slid only slightly in the remainder. Year-over-year, however, median prices were up in 61 percent, or 1,984, of Zones.
“Micro-markets inside Opportunity Zones continue to reap remarkably consistent benefits from the home-price boom that is still reaching far and wide across the country,” said Rob Barber, CEO for Attom, in the release. “Again and again, we are seeing notable levels of economic potential in these areas that have long been in need of revival. This keeps happening as rising values and tight supplies of homes for sale push many buyers on limited budgets into areas they may not have considered a few years ago.”
Attom’s data revealed some numbers worthy of concern, mainly that median prices were up in 47 percent of Zones where homes normally sold for less than $125,000 during Q4 2024. The data also found that “median values in the fourth quarter of 2024 ranged from $200,000 to $299,999 in 25 percent of Opportunity Zones while they topped the nationwide fourth-quarter median of $360,000 in just 20 percent.”
Still, Attom found that Q4 median prices in about 80 percent of Opportunity Zones remained below the U.S. median for non-Zone homes, or $360,000. Median prices were still less than $200,000 in almost half the Zones, the company said.
Kentucky, Colorado, Wisconsin, Utah and Arizona saw the median price of homes in Opportunity Zones increase the most by quarter. The Bluegrass State saw the biggest annual jump at 71 percent.
“Opportunity Zone price trends are far from consistent, with the lowest-end areas struggling to keep up. That’s a warning sign for those neighborhoods,” Barber said. “But the big takeaway from the latest data is that significant money is flowing into these locations, which can provide a stepping stone for the investment that the Opportunity Zone legislation is intended to spur.”
These largely urban census tracts were identified by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 as being in or alongside lower-income communities. They include regions with an average of 4,000 people, no fewer than 1,200 or more than 8,000. Developers are granted a number of tax incentives to invest in building projects to spur economic growth.
