IRC Section 42(g)(1)(C) added a third minimum set-aside option to LIHTC in 2018 -- one that lets a project mix units from 20% up to 80% of AMI as long as the average lands at 60% or below. Here's how the designations work, and how a 2022 Treasury rule closed the compliance trap that made early adopters nervous.
The 4% credit isn't awarded in a competitive round at all -- it's triggered automatically once a project clears a tax-exempt bond financing test. Here's how private activity bond volume cap actually works, and why a 2025 statutory change to that test just freed up a meaningful share of it.
HOME is the most common federal subsidy paired with the Housing Credit, but it runs its own affordability clock, its own rent limits, and its own review process -- all separate from LIHTC's. Here's how the two programs actually fit together under 24 CFR Part 92.
LIHTC's '15-year compliance period' is not when a deal's affordability restrictions actually end -- that's a common misreading. Here's how the real 30-year extended use period works, the narrow escape hatch Congress built into it, and the separate nonprofit right of first refusal that ended up decided in federal court.
A competitive 9% LIHTC application is a lot more than a scoring narrative. Here's the real document package underneath it -- threshold evidence, the market study Section 42(m) requires, financial documentation, sponsor evidence, and what an allocating agency does with the file after the award.
Use this LIHTC feasibility checklist to organize site risks, rent assumptions, costs, financing, and the next decision before committing to a parcel.
See how NOI, DSCR, interest rate, and amortization affect permanent debt capacity in a LIHTC model, with a worked example and sensitivity table.
Use a real deal and seven practical tests to evaluate LIHTC feasibility software, from source citations and scenario changes to exports and review.
OBBBA permanently raised the 2026 9% credit ceiling 12%, to a per-capita multiplier of $3.416. California's competitive round still turned away nearly three of every five applicants. Here's why a bigger ceiling didn't shrink the gap, and what actually closes it on a specific deal.
California's near-construction affordable housing pipeline sat at 461 developments and a $2.3 billion funding gap as of March 2026 — real evidence of how many candidate deals compete for the same scarce dollars, and why comparing them requires one underwriting standard instead of a different spreadsheet for each.
Every LIHTC QAP runs on the same three-part structure -- threshold requirements, competitive point categories, and tie-breakers -- but IRC Section 42(m)(1)(C) leaves the weighting entirely to each state, which is exactly why the same parcel can score well in one and poorly in the next.
HUD rebuilds the QCT and DDA lists from scratch every year, nationwide — the 2026 designations dropped to 14,496 qualified census tracts and 2,902 Difficult Development Areas, down from 15,727 and 2,958 the year before, without a single boundary changing shape.
Parcel Search scores every candidate parcel against 16 real site-suitability signals spanning four different questions — what you're allowed to build, what the site is worth in a competitive round, what's actually walkable, and whether the parcel itself can support a project. Here's the full roster, grouped the way an underwriter actually reads it.
A section-by-section breakdown of CTCAC's Site Amenities scoring under 4 CCR Section 10325(c)(4)(A) — the distance thresholds, the fine print that trips up applications, and the rural exception.
A QCT/DDA designation boosts eligible basis to 130% under IRC Section 42(d)(5)(B). Here's how the two tests actually differ, and why DDA matters more than most sites assume.
CTCAC's "Rural" definition isn't about county maps. Three independent tests mean a site in a small city can qualify even inside a metro county.
A practitioner's guide to how a LIHTC capital stack is actually built layer by layer, why it must balance exactly, and where the real underwriting time goes.
The best LIHTC parcels aren't listed because their owners aren't trying to sell. Here's how to find them in public records before anyone else calls.
AB 2011 ties density and height directly to transit distance. Here's how the statute's tiers work, and why the transit test isn't a new map at all.
