National Council of Affordable Housing Market Analysts Ð Activity Update

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Tax Credit Advisor, July 2009: The National Council of Affordable Housing Market Analysts (NCAHMA), a working group of real estate market analysts who focus part of their practice on affordable housing properties, has taken several recent strides to expand its visibility among multifamily real estate professionals.


NCAHMA’s mission is to increase awareness of the value and benefits of properly conducted market analyses for affordable housing developments and to promote its guidelines and resources as the industry standard, in order to improve the overall quality and accountability of residential market feasibility reports. These include market studies for low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) projects.


Peer Review


In late 2008, NCAHMA, a council within the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association, expanded and restructured its peer-review program. Individual market analysts seeking to use NCAHMA’s Practitioner Designation must undergo periodic peer review as part of NCAHMA’s overall continuing education requirement.


White Papers


In November 2008, NCAHMA adopted a new white paper addressing aspects of affordable housing market demand. The paper, Recommended Practices for Determining Demand, was added to NCAHMA’s growing list of educational resources and industry guidelines. NCAHMA’s Standards Committee is developing a new white paper on conducting successful field work and site visits for market studies. 


Market Analysis for FHA MAP Lending


 NCAHMA has become the leading voice for professionalism in LIHTC market analysis. Adoption of the Council’s best practices by state housing finance agencies has been an important contributing factor to the success of the LIHTC program.


To expand this success to other kinds of multifamily housing developments, NCAHMA has formed a committee to promote the use of its model market study standards by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and its Multifamily Accelerated Program (MAP) lenders. NCAHMA believes conforming FHA’s market study requirements to the industry standards used by the LIHTC underwriting community will help streamline and improve the loan underwriting process for projects using FHA multifamily mortgage insurance programs.


(For more information on NCAHMA and its activities, go to http://www. housingonline.com, and contact Thom Amdur, 202-939-1753, tamdur@housing online.com, or Greg Sidorov, 202-939-1773, [email protected].)