The Spring Street Brief

Merchants Capital has closed $185 million in financing to acquire and rehabilitate Nostrand Houses, a 1,148-unit multifamily property in Brooklyn — marking the first-ever financial closing under New York City's Public Housing Preservation Trust. The deal includes a $50 million co-loan from the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust and signals that the Trust's conversion framework is now fully operation...

The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the IRS have announced new Opportunity Zone designations covering more than 6,500 communities, effective January 1, 2027. Enacted under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the redesignations make the incentive permanent and introduce a 10-year renewal cycle — with enhanced benefits for rural zones that carry direct implications for LIHTC deal structuring, mixed-...

HUD has announced the largest decrease in homelessness ever recorded, with the 2026 Point-in-Time count identifying 698,425 homeless individuals on a single night in January — a 6.3% decline since January 2025. The announcement accompanies a formal policy shift away from Housing First toward a Treatment First model, with significant downstream implications for LIHTC developers, Continuum of Care g...

The U.S. Census Bureau released the delayed American Community Survey one-year data for 2025, showing a 3.75% increase in national median income. Based on that figure, Novogradac estimates the 2027 cap on HUD income-limit increases will come in at slightly more than 7.5% — a meaningful signal for LIHTC developers, syndicators, lenders, and state HFAs actively underwriting pipeline deals. Key Takea...

HUD's Office of Multifamily Housing Programs has issued a Housing Notice extending the HOTMA compliance deadline by one full year, moving the mandatory implementation date for all project-based rental assistance program owners from January 1, 2027, to January 1, 2028. The extension covers both the HOTMA final rule and all discretionary policy elections, giving owners, management agents, and softwa...

FHA's Office of Multifamily Housing Programs has issued a Mortgagee Letter implementing the LIHTC Express Lane Initiative — a new, streamlined underwriting review and closing process for qualifying LIHTC transactions seeking Section 221(d)(4) new construction financing. For affordable housing developers, syndicators, lenders, and state housing finance agencies, this represents a structural shift i...

HUD's Office of Multifamily Housing has extended the deadline to December 19 for Project-Based Rental Assistance owners and agents to resolve tenant citizenship and immigration status discrepancies flagged by the EIV-SAVE Tenant Matching Report. The report came back online on October 19 after a period of unavailability, prompting the extension and resetting the compliance clock for PBRA operators...

The National Low Income Housing Coalition released a fact sheet drawing on HUD's own Regulatory Impact Analysis — published in February 2026 — to argue that HUD's proposed mixed-status rule would leave fewer families served, force housing providers to reduce services, and push affordable units into vacancy. As the rule sits at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs awaiting final action,...

HUD has announced more than $150 million in Section 811 Project Rental Assistance awards distributed to 21 state housing agencies, targeting affordable housing expansion for extremely low-income people with disabilities. For LIHTC developers, syndicators, and lenders active in the supportive housing space, this round signals new project-based subsidy opportunities with a required Medicaid integrat...

New Hampshire Housing's Multifamily Housing Division has repealed its HFA 116 Conduit Multifamily Bond Financing Program Rules following a Board of Directors vote on October 29, 2026. The repeal is designated short-term to allow for a comprehensive review, but it immediately halts application intake for conduit bond deals — directly impacting 4% LIHTC transactions in the state. For developers, syn...

The Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) board has approved its 2026 4% LIHTC with Bond Gap Financing (BGF) guidelines, opening the application window for one of Ohio's most critical affordable housing financing tools. Applications are due February 16, 2027, at 5:00 p.m. This approval is a key planning milestone for developers, syndicators, lenders, and investors with Ohio pipeline deals that depend...

As the affordable housing industry heads into 2027 with expanded LIE-tek capacity and renewed GSE participation, Walker & Dunlop executives John O'Toole and John Ducey have outlined five market signals that will determine which deals get structured, capitalized, and closed — and which fall short. The signals span rent dynamics, collections quality, capital stack execution, preservation complex...

President Trump signed an executive order on October 22, 2026, targeting single-family housing and mortgage costs, directing the FHFA to restructure mortgage insurance premiums, expand title insurance waivers, and stand up a new Manufactured Housing Innovation Task Force co-chaired by HUD and FHFA. Separately, the Treasury Department proposed regulations under the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act...

President Trump signed an Executive Order titled "Decreasing Housing Costs for the American People," establishing the Task Force on Manufactured Housing Innovation. HUD Secretary Turner will co-chair the task force alongside the FHFA Director, with the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, and Veterans Affairs also at the table. The multi-agency structure signals a whole-of-government push to mode...

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has released a report quantifying HUD's 2025 workforce and spending changes. HUD reduced its staff by 29% — primarily through deferred resignation programs — with more than half of departing employees carrying at least 10 years of service and 41% holding more than 20 years. For LIHTC investors, developers, syndicators, and lenders, the loss of that institu...

LIE-tek turns 40 tomorrow, and Congress has been busy. Six bills currently in play could reshape the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program and affiliated affordable housing finance tools — from tripling state allocations and slashing the private activity bond threshold to creating 250,000 new housing vouchers. With the House and Senate in recess until November 9, the post-midterm landscape will de...

Related Companies has closed a $750M Wells Fargo mortgage on Manhattan Plaza, a 1,689-unit Section 8 complex at 576 10th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, retiring a $450M Fannie Mae loan. Filed simultaneously: a new HUD agreement extending the building's Section 8 status for 20 years, keeping rents affordable for households at or below 80% AMI. For LIHTC investors, lenders, and preservation practitioners...

Merchants Capital has closed a $97.8 million financing package to rehabilitate Stuart Gardens, a 491-unit affordable housing development in Newport News, Virginia. The deal layers five distinct capital sources — including a $62.8 million HUD 221(d)(4) permanent loan, $35 million in equity bridge financing from Merchants Bank, LIHTC equity, federal and state historic tax credits, and HUD Green and...

The U.S. Department of Commerce finalized antidumping and countervailing duty rates on Canadian softwood lumber at 24.75%, down from approximately 35.16% — but a separate 10% Section 232 tariff imposed by the Trump administration keeps the total effective duty burden at 34.75%. For LIHTC developers relying on wood-frame construction, the partial reduction is meaningful in direction but limited in...

HUD has issued a notice maintaining its existing Section 3 benchmark goals for hiring low- and very low-income workers on covered housing projects, citing an absence of sufficient data to justify a revision. The agency is simultaneously opening a comment period, requesting input from grantees, contractors, and other stakeholders on compliance challenges and recommendations for future benchmarks. T...

HUD announced on October 14, 2026 that FHA is immediately expanding multifamily mortgage insurance eligibility to Build to Rent communities — single-family homes, duplexes, and triplexes operated as rental properties. The change applies to FHA's Section 221(d)(4) new construction program and Section 223(f) acquisition and refinancing program, removing a long-standing barrier that had shut this gro...

USDA Rural Development has updated the Section 538 Guaranteed Loan Program and launched a new Multifamily Housing Preservation Pilot, effective October 9, 2026, through September 25, 2028. For LIHTC developers, lenders, and syndicators active in rural markets, these changes signal a deliberate effort to reduce deal friction and accelerate preservation of aging USDA-assisted stock — with a two-year...

The Build America Caucus, co-chaired by Rep. Josh Harder (D-CA) and Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-UT), released its Build More Agenda ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. A key provision for affordable housing stakeholders: a proposed exemption from Buy America Build America (BABA) requirements — a compliance layer that has added cost and procurement complexity to HUD-assisted and bond-financed multifamil...

New research from the Terner Center for Housing Innovation examines the intersection of California's escalating home insurance premiums and its deepening affordable housing crisis. As climate-linked wildfire disasters push insurers out of high-risk markets, LIHTC developers, syndicators, and lenders face real pro forma risk — from preservation deals in the wildland-urban interface to new construct...

Thirty months after Chicago announced its 2023 LIHTC awards, only 2 of 13 funded projects have closed and broken ground — a concrete signal that the city's layered approval process is straining one of affordable housing's most important financing tools. With $562M in estimated development costs on the line and construction inflation pushing per-unit costs higher, the stalled pipeline raises urgent...