Another point of interest for San Jose is the buzz around Opportunity Zones. With 11 designated Census tracts, San Jose has the most zones in Silicon Valley, and investors have responded by looking for deals throughout the new zones, especially in downtown, according to the city of San Jose.

As a city, San Jose doesn't have a formal implementation role under the Opportunity Zone statute, which was included in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. But it is keenly interested in facilitating investment that helps fulfill the city's general plan, grows housing opportunities, activates transit and increases jobs.

Moreover, as early as 2003, San Jose saw the challenges in categorizing office users, and created new categories that spanned the gap. Because of the way its tax code works, the city has always included sunset provisions in these categories so it can go back and make changes.

The latest of these changes, which used a definition of “office, research and development” to identify tech users as “industrial”, expired in March 2017. City staff brought forward a plan to create a new category that treated all types of office the same, regardless of whether it is tech, finance or some other general business office, and tax those users at a reduced 2% rate.

Rather than implementing the change right away, the city council gave a two-year extension to the previous program to allow projects that had already been planned to move forward. On March 31, that program was discontinued and the new 2% office rate went into effect this month.