Mark Fogarty Author Archives

National Church Residences and FTK Construction Services are working on their second project together in Texas and have agreed to do a third. The two companies seem to have some items of philosophy in common that make for a productive partnership. Interviewed separately, they both say the same thing about the seniors living in the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) development they are renovating in Richardson, a suburb of Dallas: They want the residents to be able to enjoy upgraded features and stay in their homes for life.

The planets are all lined up for tax-exempt affordable multifamily bonds right now, for both public offerings and private placements. That’s the unanimous conclusion reached by a panel on the Tax Exempt Multifamily Bond Market at the recent Summer Institute of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association.

An egalitarian spirit of co-locating affordable renters in a development along with middle-income residents and market-rate occupants is a housing idea that is being seen more and more. One such effort is in Springfield, MA, where a rehab is underway to create revitalized housing for a population that includes all three types: affordable, workforce and market-rate renters.

The Sursum Corda development in Washington, DC is a huge and hugely complicated deal. One thing that is helping to bring more than 1,000 planned units of housing to the capital neighborhood is structuring separate condominiums for the affordable and market-rate units.

USA Properties Fund thinks big.

By developing a large number of affordable housing units in its projects, the Roseville, CA-based firm helps house more families and develops economies that reduce costs.

Private placements may make up to three quarters of the affordable multifamily housing bond market, but that doesn’t mean that publicly offered bonds are a weak sister. In fact, growth in tax-exempt bond public offerings may be even larger than the increase in private placements in 2021.

If you used painting as a metaphor for mixed-income housing projects, Nashville’s Envision Cayce would need to be displayed on a very large canvas indeed. Perhaps on the scale of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And if everything works out the way it has started, people may well be calling it a masterpiece soon.

Low interest rates are enabling refinancing on multifamily projects that can free up money for developers to use on additional affordable and workforce housing production.

Private placements, with their higher loan proceeds, additional flexibility and with less complexity than many other affordable housing executions, now make up more than 70 percent of the tax-exempt bond market and volumes are set to grow again this year.

Teachers will be returning to Washington, DC’s Malcolm X Elementary School, which closed in 2013. The city is renovating the old school to put in place a permanent home for an “early college” high school. But now they will also have the chance to live adjacent to the new school in a new development, as part of a District initiative to boost housing for educators.

Extensive consultation with the residents of Washington, DC’s Ward 7 gave city officials and developers a clear sense of how local folk would like to see a vacant old school in the Marshall Heights section redeveloped. The residents wanted housing. Lots of it, rentals and homeownership units, housing for seniors, affordable, workforce, market rate. They wanted commercial properties, retail. Perhaps most of all, they wanted a grocery store for a neighborhood that currently doesn’t have one.

A troubling spike in lumber prices may not break until later this year, as a badly out-of-whack supply and demand equation continues to roil the construction industry.