One competitive round a year for 9%, a rolling window for 4% -- both on NDHFA's own forms — North Dakota

Two tracks under one QAP: an annual competitive round, and a rolling bond window

The 2027 Allocation Plan states the noncompetitive treatment of 4% deals more explicitly than the 2026 Plan did: "Applications for an allocation of noncompetitive 4% LIHTCs are not subject to a minimum score." That reflects the underlying mechanic -- a 4% deal isn't competing against other applicants for a capped annual credit pool the way a 9% deal is; its constraint is the tax-exempt bond volume it can secure, reviewed and Conditionally Committed on its own timeline via the § 42(m)(2)(D) letter rather than ranked in a single round.

Both tracks route through the same front door: an application only gets an application number and a Threshold Requirements review once its $500 Application Processing Fee has been verified as collected. For 4% deals filed outside the competitive round, that fee is due when the Applicant submits an Intent to Apply, ahead of any funding consideration. Applications may also be submitted during the calendar month before an Application Cycle's Closing Date for a one-time pre-review and feedback pass by the Agency -- a real, if narrow, opportunity to catch a defect before it counts against the formal filing.

Threshold requirements: what has to be true on day one

An application must be "fully executed, fully completed, and satisfy each Threshold Requirement" to be eligible for scoring at all. The 2027 Plan's Threshold list (Section 5) runs from Application and Demonstrated Site Control through Self-Scoring, and a few items are worth flagging for how specific they are:

Missing a Threshold Requirement after the Closing Date is not an automatic disqualification: the Agency gives the Applicant "a reasonable time to submit the missing Threshold Requirement(s)" -- but assesses a 2-point scoring deduction for each missing item. On the cost side, NDHFA may reject an application outright if its qualified basis per square foot exceeds 110% of the median qualified basis per square foot of selected projects in the previous two years; that ceiling was stated as $468.25 in the 2026 Plan and dropped to $355.79 in the 2027 Plan -- a roughly 24% swing this research could not independently explain (whether from a shift in the mix of recently selected projects, fewer high-cost outliers, or another cause) but that a developer pricing a 2027-round application against the prior year's number would badly misjudge.

Capacity and experience gating: two separate locks, one for LIHTC and one for HOME/HTF

An applicant new to LIHTC "must partner with a developer, sponsor, and/or consultant included in a development team which received a LIHTC allocation from a federally approved allocator for a specific project and has placed that project in-service within the prior five years." Separately, an applicant (or closely related party) who has not yet placed a LIHTC project in service in North Dakota is locked out of submitting an additional North Dakota application "until the initial development is, at a minimum, under construction and proceeding on schedule."

HOME and HTF funding carry their own, parallel capacity gate rather than folding into the LIHTC one: an application using HOME and/or HTF funds must include the Applicant's current Sam.gov registration, must demonstrate the team's experience or working knowledge of the full slate of federal cross-cutting requirements (Section 3, Women- and Minority-owned Business Enterprise contracting, Davis-Bacon and related acts, environmental review, Section 504/ADA, lead-based paint mitigation, the Uniform Relocation Act, and property condition standards), and locks an applicant out of a further HOME/HTF application "until the initial development is, at a minimum, under construction and proceeding on schedule" -- the same standard as the LIHTC-only rule, but running on its own, separate project.

A developer could clear the LIHTC-only gate (existing ND LIHTC project under construction) while still being blocked on a HOME/HTF-funded application by a stalled HOME-funded project, or vice versa -- the two gates track different projects and do not automatically satisfy each other.

Applicants with the development team's limited affordable-housing experience "are encouraged to partner with an experienced developer, party, and/or sponsor," and NDHFA may require historical financial statements. Separately, the Plan disqualifies applicants convicted of, or who have pleaded guilty (including nolo contendere) to, an enumerated list of dishonesty and fraud-related offenses, and anyone debarred from any North Dakota, other-state, or federal program; NDHFA may also inquire with other state allocating agencies about an Applicant's or Developer's performance history and treat negative findings as disqualifying.

Fees, and a 2027 restructuring of when the Allocation Fee comes due

The $500 Application Processing Fee is nonrefundable and must clear before an application is reviewed for eligibility. Beyond that, the Allocation Fee -- 10% of the LIHTC Allocation in total -- is now split differently by credit type than it was under the 2026 Plan.

A few other fee mechanics carry over unchanged in both Plans: a transfer of controlling ownership interest before Final Allocation requires a nonrefundable transfer fee of $2,500 or 1% of the currently allocated annual credit amount, whichever is greater (with payment not obligating NDHFA to approve the transfer), and late fees at every subsequent gate are never eligible to be included in basis.

Set-asides and the self-scoring ranking mechanics

Ten percent of the state's LIHTC allocation is set aside for Non-Profit Participation: the applicant must be a 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) organization with an exempt purpose of fostering low-income housing, a minimum 50% general partner ownership position, and material, ongoing participation through the compliance and extended-use periods; only the highest-ranking non-profit application counts toward the set-aside, with any others competing head-to-head against for-profit applications. A separate Native American Set-Aside awards the highest-scoring qualified application located on North Dakota Indian reservations or tribal land (trust or fee-simple) in the first application round, subject to the state's Maximum Credit Limit.

A structural set-aside present in the 2026 Plan does not appear to have carried forward: the 2026 Plan's "New Development/Renovation Parity" mechanic (Section 8.C) guaranteed that, after the set-aside winners were chosen, the next eligible awards would go to the highest-scoring project of whichever construction type (New Development or Renovation) had not yet won one -- ensuring at least one of each type got funded before either type could sweep the remaining awards. This research did not find that mechanic anywhere in the 2027 Plan's Set-Asides section, which lists only the Non-Profit and Native American set-asides. A Renovation-track (or New Development-track) applicant relying on that parity guarantee from a prior cycle should confirm directly with NDHFA whether it has actually been discontinued or simply relocated within the 2027 document.

Applicants submit their own self-scoring narrative, and NDHFA verifies it; the 9% minimum is 55 points, ties go to the project needing fewer LIHTCs per unit, and no more than two projects may be approved in any one city during a competitive round (an exception applies to a prior-year-approved project receiving an additional current-year allocation, which does not count against that city's cap).