$4,800 for a list of opportunity zone funds that turned out to be advertising

Notes have been most of my reading, but a gain from selling a small paper position had me looking at OZ funds because someone in another forum said it was the obvious place for it. About $60k of gain, so not enormous, but enough that I wanted to do it properly.

I found an outfit selling an "OZ fund access program." $4,800. What I thought I was buying: an independent screen of funds, with the fee math laid out, so I could compare five or six side by side without doing it all myself.

What I actually got: a PDF with 22 funds in it, a spreadsheet with columns for minimum investment and stated target return, and two introduction calls. On the second call the person walked me through one fund in particular in a lot of detail, and when I asked how the funds got on the list, he said sponsors "participate in the program." So they paid to be on it. The detailed one paid more, I assume. Nothing in the PDF said this anywhere I could find, and I went looking twice.

The fee column was also the fund's stated management fee only. No promote, no acquisition fee, no disposition fee, no fund admin. On the two funds I later pulled full documents for, the actual cost to me over a hold was roughly double what the spreadsheet implied.

So $4,800 and about five months, and I ended up back at square one, except now I've read two full sets of fund documents myself and understand the fee stack better than the spreadsheet did.

What I'd do differently: pay a professional I'm hiring on my side, hourly, to read documents I bring them. Not pay anyone who is in a position to be paid by the funds too. And ask, in the first two minutes, who else pays you.