A qualified opportunity fund is a corporation or partnership that elects into the program by self-certifying on Form 8996, filed with its tax return. There's no application, no approval letter, and no minimum size. A single-member LLC can't be the fund on its own, because the fund has to be taxed as a partnership or a corporation, so people typically set up a two-member LLC or elect corporate treatment. That structural detail is a conversation with a tax professional, since it changes how everything else in your return works.
Rough dollars, and these vary by state and by who you hire. State entity filing runs from about $50 to $500. An attorney drafting an operating agreement for a single-project fund is commonly quoted in the low thousands, call it $2,000 to $5,000. The annual return with the 8996 attached is where the ongoing cost sits, and CPAs who do these regularly tend to charge more than for a plain rental LLC, often a few thousand a year. Fund administration software is priced for vehicles with outside investors and generally isn't worth it for one building.
No securities license or SEC registration is needed to place your own gain into your own fund, because you aren't selling anything to anyone. The moment you take a dollar from a friend, you're offering a security and you need securities counsel first.
Insurance and contractor licensing don't change because of the tax election. You need builder's risk and general liability sized to your project, and the license rules for the work are whatever your state requires. The tax structure sits on top of an ordinary construction job.
