Application assembly and submission — Michigan

One application, four categories, and a gate before the gate

Every applicant must choose exactly one Primary Category — Preservation, Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH), Open Urban, or Open Rural — each drawing from its own share of the LIHTC ceiling, and may additionally apply in the optional Strategic Investment Category, which is scored outside the standard Scoring Criteria entirely and evaluated at LIHTC staff's sole discretion against Exhibit III's own requirements. Preservation carries an extra precondition the other three don't: before a preservation project can compete for 9 percent credit at all, the applicant must submit a Notice of Intent to Apply package so MSHDA can determine whether the project is more likely to be competitive under the Gap Financing Program instead (see Phase 7). Only an unfavorable determination — or an existing sub-49-unit USDA Rural Development deal, which is exempt from the screen — clears the project to apply for 9 percent credit under Preservation.

Exhibit I: twenty-five pass/fail threshold items, several on tight, absolute clocks

General Threshold Requirements (Exhibit I) apply to every project regardless of category, and MSHDA treats the first one as deliberately subjective: "MSHDA will reject applications with multiple material errors in documentation, incomplete information, and/or general inconsistencies. Decisions under this threshold requirement are intentionally made on a subjective basis and are entirely under MSHDA's discretion." The remaining twenty-four items are more mechanical, but several carry document-freshness windows that are easy to blow past without anything else about the application changing.

Two threshold items are easy to underweight because they read like green-building extras rather than pass/fail gates. The Utilities threshold (Exhibit I §V) now requires every unit to have high-speed internet capability, and separately requires any Urban new-construction, adaptive-reuse, or substantial (gut) rehab project to install EV-charging-ready infrastructure — a conduit system from the electrical panel to EV-ready spaces, a panel sized for future overcurrent devices, and infrastructure sized for Level 2 charging capability at a minimum of 5 percent of total units. The Energy Efficient Buildings Policy threshold (Exhibit I §XII) separately requires every project to incorporate one of the third-party standards listed in the Combined Application's Tab M. Neither is a scoring item; both are pass/fail.

The Financing threshold (Exhibit I §IX) also forecloses a common shortcut: an applicant "must not plan on using solely LIHTC equity financing," and if a project lists another competitive funding round's money as a source, MSHDA requires a contingency plan — which may include deferring the developer fee within the QAP's own limits — or the application isn't eligible for an award at all.

Scoring runs on a separate document: Sections A through F

The QAP body (Section VIII, "Selection Criteria") states that MSHDA scores applications under "the QAP Scoring Criteria (including any related Policy Bulletins and Addenda)" — a separate, MSHDA-published workbook (the 2026–2027 Scoring Summary, currently Version 01.2026) that applicants self-score in Excel before MSHDA finalizes it. That workbook, not the QAP's own Section VIII lettering, is where the real point categories live, and it uses its own independent A-through-F lettering that should not be confused with Section VIII's separate A/B/C subsections (Housing in Areas of Opportunity, Tiebreakers, and Re-evaluation, respectively).

Section D is worth reading closely before assuming a development team's track record only ever helps. Its two positive items — previous experience of the GP/member (7 points) and of the management agent (4 points) — add up to the 11-point section ceiling MSHDA's own Quick Reference Sheet lists as Section D's "Section Total." Listed alongside them, in the same section, are four real deductions that don't raise that ceiling but do subtract from a project's overall score if they apply: a Rental Development's Temporary Point Reduction (−5), Asset Management's Noncompliance Letters Policy (−20), Poor Previous Participation of the Applicant (−20), and Poor Previous Participation of the Management Agent (−20). A team with an open noncompliance letter or a flagged prior-participation history can lose far more off its total score in Section D than the rest of the application can make up.

Neither the QAP nor the Scoring Criteria document reviewed here states a minimum total score an application must clear to win an award. Funding instead runs purely on relative ranking: the highest-scoring applications within each Category and funding round win, until that category's share of the credit ceiling (or the Undesignated Credit, once statutory set-asides are filled) runs out. That makes Michigan's process closer to a pure relative tournament than a pass-a-bar-then-compete model — there is no floor score below which even an uncontested application would be refused an award.

The application fee itself is straightforward and confirmed against the current QAP: "$45 for each proposed low-income unit, with a $2,500 maximum limit," non-refundable, and due "in each funding round in which a project is seeking to be scored and/or evaluated." A returned check triggers a separate $100 non-sufficient-funds fee.

Tiebreakers and the seven-day re-evaluation window

When two projects tie, Section VIII.B resolves it in a fixed sequence: first by the highest score under the PSH Developments section (for projects in the PSH Category), then by the lowest actual credit amount per 9 percent LIHTC unit, then by the highest score under the Scoring Criteria's Opportunity Criteria sections (A or B), then by the lowest average targeted AMI in the project, and only after all of that is exhausted does MSHDA staff resolve it at their own discretion.

After MSHDA posts its award list, an applicant has a narrow window to contest a specific finding: "Within seven days of MSHDA posting a list of awards to its website, an applicant may ask MSHDA in writing to re-evaluate a specific portion of an application." Critically, MSHDA "will not consider any additional documentation that was not provided with the application but may consider information intended to clarify portions of the application" — this is a review of what was already submitted, not a second chance to fix a missing exhibit, and MSHDA has sole discretion over whether re-evaluation changes the outcome.