Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

By the time you read this, tax-exempt private activity bonds will be dead. Or they won’t. The New Markets Tax Credit will be dead. Or it won’t. The top corporate bracket will be 20 percent. Or it won’t.

Now that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been greenlighted to get back into the Low Income Housing Tax Credit market, the big agencies aren’t wasting any time. Freddie hopes to announce its first investment next month, and Fannie says it expects to re-enter the market in the first quarter of next year.

On August 15, 2017, in the presence of government leaders, financing partners and local residents, the community health organization, CrescentCare, broke ground on its new health campus at 1631 Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans.

The public perception of New Market Tax Credits (NMTC) is that they are a federal program meant to revitalize urban areas. The credits have been used by community development entities to obtain financing that restores the vacant storefronts and aging business infrastructure of America’s inner cities. But more recently, NMTCs have actually been repurposed to favor non-metro America, defined as the counties that don’t have a core urban area of over 50,000, and are considered by the federal government to be “rural.”

What I love most about the affordable housing industry is that it is populated by so many makers, doers and visionaries. Where most people see a piece of dirt, a blighted factory or a run-down apartment community, the tax credit developer seeks to fill an unmet societal need or market niche and conceives a future community.

As we reach our deadline for this issue, the two houses of Congress are playing ping pong with our tax code. If those on the House side of the table win, the New Markets Tax Credit may not survive. If those on the Senate side win, it may survive. And then again, either side can change its mind.

One of the most common raps against any kind of social welfare program for low-income individuals is that it robs them of the incentive to better themselves.

Jeffrey Woda grew up in rural eastern Ohio, separated from Wheeling, WV by the Ohio River, the son and grandson of homebuilding contractors. He left the area to become a CPA and was employed for a time by Ernst and Young, working with construction companies, financial institutions and other corporate entities.

Sometimes it can be hard to fathom that various American governing bodies are actually inflicting a housing crisis onto their people.

This September, a new building opened in Minneapolis that, while unspectacular, represents a prototype for the future of urban American development.

If a true test of a company’s sustainability is its ability to transition from a founding or visionary CEO or leadership team to a next generation of both, then the affordable housing industry is in a watershed, where we are about to discover how many of today’s leading companies will still be so in half a decade.

The rules have changed a little on getting historic preservation tax credits on multi-building projects. But it will still be possible to do such large-scale renovations. In fact, the new guidance should make some big deals easier to do.