"We've never seen what we're seeing now," John Lettieri, president and CEO of Economic Innovation Group, a public policy organization that supports opportunity zone incentives, said in a prepared statement. "It's hard to see past it, but when [the pandemic] ends, there's a number of reasons investors might look to opportunity zones to help rebuild the economy by investing in areas that need it most."

Steve Glickman, chief executive officer of opportunity zone advisory firm Develop LLC agreed that an abundance of distressed properties in opportunity zones, downward pressure on construction prices, low interest rates and a lack of other attractive investment targets could provide industry incentives.

"All those things will conspire to create an interesting next 18 months or so," Glickman said in a prepared statement.

The Opportunity Zones Working Group has also asked the US Department of the Treasury asking for flexible extensions of capital gains investment deadlines and regulatory changes helpful to investors, funds and qualified opportunity zone businesses.

The 621 qualified opportunity funds tracked on the Novogradac Opportunities Fund List increased from 502 in January. The average equity raise for those funds reporting raises was $24.9 million. Twenty-two of the funds reported raising at least $100 million, an increase from 12 in December 2019.

Funds on the list with a national focus raised $2.38 billion, which is just under 30 percent of the total equity raised by funds that revealed their geographic strategies. Funds with a single-city focus did not raise as much money but they included more participants. One-hundred thirty-six funds out of 406 reporting raises had a single-city focus.