Congress has passed and the President has signed into law, sweeping legislation of more than two-thousand pages to fund the Federal Government for Fiscal Year 2016. There are a number of real estate related measures addressed including the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act (FIRPTA).
The bill includes two significant FIRPTA provisions. The first allows overseas investors to own up to 10% of a publicly-traded U.S. REIT (up from 5%). The second provision allows foreign pension funds to own U.S. real property interests without triggering FIRPTA withholding tax. These changes are estimated to bring billions of dollars of foreign investment into the U.S. commercial real estate market.
Read more about FIRPTA: https://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/FIRPTA-Withholding
Read more about Federal Government Funding bill and its impact on CRE HERE.