Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

As the fields of health maintenance and affordable senior housing move ever closer together, a great deal of effort is being expended on both sides to figure out and shape the best and most cost-effective ways to support that trend.

The intersection of housing and healthcare is a fascinating topic that I keep coming back to in this column and in my work with NH&RA.

I know that on your summer vacation you usually like to get away from thinking about work and bury yourself in a romance or mystery. But I’m afraid what we are offering you this July is going to be too tantalizing for you to escape. You might associate summer reading with fluff, but this issue is packed with a lot of red meat.

When properties subsidized by Low-Income Housing Tax Credits approach the end of their mandatory 15-year compliance period, the General Partner (developer/owner) and the Limited Partner (tax credit investor) have some big decisions to make. Because the Limited Partner will almost certainly want to exit the deal after the 15th year, the General Partner needs to consider all options, including sale, buy out or recapitalization. Developing an exit strategy can be complicated and stressful if not planned well in advance, but that’s where CBRE Affordable Housing can help.

As a developer, you know that the best time to think about what could happen with a particular LIHTC property at the end of the tax credit compliance period was when you negotiated the investment documents.

Multifamily affordable housing developers who work in California have a lot to keep track of right now. Governor Jerry Brown recently acknowledged the state’s housing crisis and laid out solutions to spur development. With 45 million residents and growing, America’s largest state’s four housing agencies are seeing rising demand for their programs and products and reacting with new regulations.

Since the advent of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (“LIHTC”) via the enactment of the Tax Reform Act in 1986, over 2.6 million affordable rental units have been created by what many feel has been the most important piece of housing legislation ever passed.

For the past 15 years, members of CohnReznick’s Tax Credit Investment Services group have worked on housing credit performance studies in various capacities, and in that period, we have witnessed the pool of properties surveyed balloon from 5,000 to more than 20,000. (The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program at Year 30: Recent Investment Performance 2013-2014)

The people who oppose affordable housing projects often seem to speak an entirely different language from those who support the development of safe, new homes for those who cannot afford market rents. Housing advocates hope to start a more productive conversation.

A few weeks ago at the World Bank’s biannual Global Housing Finance Summit, a conference of roughly 350 housing executives from around the world (mainly from national governments and the Bank itself), I spoke on Financing Housing Down the Income Pyramid, and the ensuing Q&A session produced this challenging question from the audience, “How do we create effective affordable rental tenures?” That choice of words instantly set me thinking, and in formulating my answer, I stumbled on the right way to frame the question.

Success has its costs. As portfolios grow, so do expenses, staff and responsibilities. Assets bring great value but come with great demands.

As housing costs increase in communities throughout the country, the need for workforce housing has emerged as a frequent topic of conversation. But a precise definition of what it encompasses seems to vary according to the locality.