The post-award clock: reservation to carryover — New Hampshire

One agency, two clocks

New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority (NH Housing) is the state's sole LIHTC allocating agency and, unlike California's CTCAC/CDLAC split, also its own tax-exempt bond issuer for multifamily housing — the Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP, administrative rule HFA 109) is adopted under NH Housing's general rulemaking authority at RSA 204-C:9, and the same document ("To the extent any information in the QAP is inconsistent with IRC §42, the provisions of IRC §42 shall govern" — HFA 109.11.G) governs both credit types. There is no separate CDLAC-equivalent to coordinate a bond allocation with; NH Housing runs its own Multi-Family Bond Financing Program (HFA 114) and Conduit Bond Rules (HFA 116) directly.

The 9% program runs one competitive round a year with a single Board vote. The 4%/tax-exempt-bond program runs as a rolling pipeline under an annual Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO): a competitive Track 1 for deals also requesting NH Housing capital subsidy, and a non-competitive Track 2, on quarterly response cycles, for bond-only deals. These are two different cadences sharing one rulebook, not one calendar with two credit types.

Every downstream clock in HFA 109 — Progress Phase, the October 1 carryover deadline, the 10 percent test — runs from "notification of a reservation of LIHTCs," not from the Board's vote date itself, and the QAP does not publish a fixed gap between the two. Anchor to the actual reservation letter, not the meeting minutes.

There is no acceptance step — the fee is already committed

CTCAC-style states run a post-award acceptance window with its own performance-deposit deadline. NH Housing doesn't: the 1% LIHTC fee is postmarked with the final application, before the Board ever votes, and the QAP's own fee terms decide what happens to it depending on the outcome.

No equivalent to a 20-day, penalty-free walk-away window appears anywhere in HFA 109 — the QAP simply states that once NH Housing makes a reservation, no part of the already-paid fee is refundable. The cheapest moment to be certain a deal will proceed is before the final application is postmarked, not after the award.

The one fixed clock: 120 days

Unlike CTCAC's Executive-Director-assigned 180/194-day Readiness window, NH Housing uses a single, non-discretionary number for both credit types: Progress Phase Requirements are due "within 120 days of notification of a reservation of LIHTCs or 30 days prior to the deadline for carryover allocation, whichever is sooner" (Appendix A). For the 2027 round, 120 days from a mid-to-late December notification lands in the spring — well ahead of the October 1 carryover deadline — so the 120-day rule is the one that actually governs.

Carryover: three dates, one deal

Carryover only applies to 9% LIHTC deals, and it isn't a rolling 12-months-from-award clock — it's pegged to the calendar year the credits belong to. Projects "that will not be placed in service by December 31 of the year of the LIHTCs" must submit the Appendix B items by October 1 of that same year, and the Carryover Allocation Agreement itself "must be fully executed prior to December 31 of that year to maintain the LIHTC reservation."

Worked from the actual 2027 calendar: a December 17, 2026 award for 2027 credits puts the Appendix B submission due date about 9½ months out (October 1, 2027), and the execution deadline about 12½ months out (December 31, 2027). The 10 percent test cost certification is then due within 12 months of "the date that NH Housing signs the Carryover Allocation Agreement" — which, if NH Housing signs on the last possible day, pushes the outer bound to roughly 24 months after the original award.

Appendix B.4 is a genuine divergence from the stricter approach some other states take: NH Housing asks only for continued site control at carryover, not fee title. The federal 10 percent test itself doesn't require ownership either — a nonrefundable deposit or option payment counts toward the basis if it is properly capitalizable (26 CFR §1.42-6(b)) — so NH's rule tracks the federal floor rather than adding a state-specific ownership overlay.

The test's substance is federal and identical in every state: basis one year after the allocation must exceed 10 percent of reasonably expected basis at the close of the second calendar year following the allocation year (IRC §42(h)(1)(E)(ii)), certified by a CPA "in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards and IRC §42" (Appendix B). The 130 percent QCT/DDA basis boost does not count toward that basis — it's excluded under 26 CFR §1.42-6(b)(2)(ii) — a rule that trips up NH deals the same way it trips up deals in every other state, because the excluded boost sits in the same basis schedule as everything that does count.

The 4%/bond track runs on different tests

Appendix B is captioned "9% LIHTC" only, and the FY2027 Tax-Exempt Bond NOFO never mentions a 10 percent test. That's not an oversight: a building financed 50 percent or more by tax-exempt bonds sits outside the state housing credit ceiling under IRC §42(h)(4), so the ceiling-based carryover/10-percent-test mechanism of §42(h)(1)(E) simply doesn't apply to it the way it applies to a 9% award. NH Housing's own final-allocation package reflects that split: for bond deals, the final cost certification must instead "provide certification of meeting the tax-exempt bond financed-by test (formerly referred to as the '50% test')" and "certify that the project meets the bond '95-5 test' requirement" (Appendix C.2).

For a Track 2, conduit, credit-enhanced deal, NH Housing's own Multi-Family Bond Financing Program rule (HFA 114, effective 2020) supplies the mechanics the NOFO doesn't: 45 days for NH Housing to accept or reject a complete application (§114.08(c)), a commitment letter issued within 14 days of Board approval (§114.10(a)), and a real estate closing held in escrow "approximately 14 days prior to the bond closing date" (§114.10(c)) — funds generally aren't available to the project until the bonds themselves close. HFA 116 governs conduit bond deals that don't use NH Housing's own credit enhancement; both point back to the FY2027 NOFO for the current application cadence.

A Progress Phase clock still applies to reservation-holders on the bond side — Exhibit D of the NOFO is the same 120-day standard list as Appendix A, adapted for bond deals, and any project-specific items land in the reservation letter itself.

What failure costs

The Developer Experience penalty is the closest thing NH has to CA's negative-points regime, but it works differently: it isn't a fixed per-violation formula, it applies to the sponsor's *next* application rather than the current deal, the point range is discretionary (-1 to -20), and the QAP explicitly folds a prior reservation that was "returned or otherwise unused" into the same disclosure-triggered category as active non-compliance — a missed readiness window this cycle can cost points on a different project two years later.

The FY2027 NOFO layers a second, separate penalty-points mechanism on top for bond deals: if a sponsor commits to a NOFO scoring item (Passive House certification, a HERS rating, a capital-subsidy-per-unit ceiling) and doesn't deliver, "a points penalty equal to the applicable scoring category will be applied to the next application from the applicant/developer for NH Housing Funding (4% and 9% LIHTC apply)" — unless NH Housing accepts a documented good-faith effort.

If NH Housing denies an award outright, the appeal window is short: denial letters go out by email "within two business days of NH Housing's Board of Directors action," and the applicant has five business days from receipt to file a formal written appeal, which goes to the Multifamily Housing Committee for a recommendation back to the Board (§109.08.B).

The tail: final allocation and Form 8609

LURA terms are fixed by project type, not negotiated per deal: 60 years for 9% LIHTC (75 for projects that commit to and score the longer term), 45 years for a 4% bond deal that also carries NH Housing capital subsidy, and 30 years for a 4% bond deal without it (§109.10.A). Compliance monitoring begins the day the first building is placed in service, and the first annual owner certification and tenant-data upload are due the following March 1 — the start of an entirely separate, multi-year monitoring relationship that sits just past the edge of this phase.