Program election (9% vs. 4% vs. hybrid) — Guam

GHURA's QAP describes only one federal credit track

The 2025 QAP's Threshold Requirements section tells applicants to pick a set-aside, and only ever describes one competitive product: "Applicants are advised that the agency will administer 9% LIHTC credits only to be used for" new construction or substantial rehabilitation without other federal funds (Threshold Requirements, II.B.2.a.i-ii). There is no parallel "4% Credits" or "Bonds" subsection anywhere in that structure, no separate timetable, and no scoring criteria that reference bond financing. The only place either the 2024 or 2025 QAP mentions tax-exempt bonds at all is a single passage in the Compliance Monitoring Plan carrying over standard IRS language about physical-inspection exceptions for "buildings or projects of which 50 percent or more of the aggregate basis is financed with the proceeds of tax-exempt bonds" — a carve-out from GHURA's own inspection duties, not a description of how a bond-financed project would apply for or receive an allocation.

That silence is not proof Guam could never do a 4% bond deal — 26 U.S.C. §42(h)(4) makes 4% credits as-of-right federal law once a project clears the aggregate-basis bond test, independent of whatever a state's or territory's own QAP happens to describe. What the silence does mean is that a developer cannot look to GHURA's QAP for any guidance on how that would actually work in Guam: there is no described set-aside election for a bond deal, no description of the §42(m) feasibility determination GHURA would need to issue, and no described coordination step with whichever agency issues the bonds. This research found no evidence in either QAP, in GHURA's public notices, or in GEDA's own published bond materials that a 4%-credit, bond-financed LIHTC deal has ever actually closed in Guam. Treat that pathway as procedurally undefined rather than administratively ready, and confirm directly with both GHURA and GEDA before underwriting around it.

The federal 9% ceiling: real numbers, sitting on the statutory floor

The dollar amount used to size every jurisdiction's 9% ceiling under 26 U.S.C. §42(h)(3)(C)(ii) is the greater of a per-capita multiplier or a fixed small-population floor, both set annually by IRS revenue procedure. Guam is included in that calculation as a matter of settled IRS practice: IRS Notice 2025-18 (2025-16 I.R.B. 1415) states that "[f]or American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the population figures for the 2025 calendar year are the 2024 midyear population figures in the U.S. Census Bureau's International Data Base," and lists Guam's resident population for that calculation as 169,532. The successor Notice 2026-22 (2026-15 I.R.B. 802) repeats the same methodology and lists Guam's population as 169,691 for the 2026 calendar year. At either figure, Guam's per-capita multiplier produces an amount far below the floor — which is exactly what happens: Rev. Proc. 2024-40 sets the 2025 amount as "the greater of (1) $3.00 multiplied by the State population, or (2) $3,455,000," and GHURA's own 2025 QAP cites $3,455,000 as Guam's exact CY2025 issuance, an exact match to the federal floor. Rev. Proc. 2025-32 sets the 2026 amount at the greater of $3.416 per capita or $3,953,600 — a figure this research could not yet confirm against a published GHURA document, since no 2026 QAP had been located as of this research.

Because Guam's ceiling has sat on the small-population floor in both years this research reviewed, the practical effect is that GHURA is allocating a genuinely small, largely fixed annual pool — not a per-capita amount that would grow meaningfully with Guam's population. A single mid-size project (Flores Rosa Gardens LLC's $1,793,120 reservation consumed roughly a quarter of the entire 2025 combined pool) can absorb a substantial share of an entire year's ceiling, which is also why the 2025 QAP tells applicants seeking more than what remains that they "must demonstrate the financial capability to show that the project can be scaled to fit the available 2025 funding."

Who actually issues bonds in Guam: GEDA, not GHURA — and a real but seemingly dormant rental-housing bond category

GEDA's own public-finance materials state plainly that bond issuance is GEDA's job, not GHURA's: "Private Activity Bonds (PABs) are issued by GEDA on behalf of private entities on a tax-exempt basis to stir economic development." GEDA's published Private Activity Bond Program document lists "Qualified Residential Rental Projects" as one of six PAB categories available on Guam, describing the same federal 20-50/40-60 set-aside tests that govern §42(h)(4) bond-financed multifamily housing: "20-50 Test – 20% or more of the residential units in the project must be occupied by individuals whose income is 50% or less of area median gross income (AMGI)" or "40-60 Test – 40% or more of the residential units in the project must be occupied by individuals whose income is 60% or less of AMGI." That is the bond category that pairs with 4% credits — confirming GEDA is at minimum statutorily positioned to issue the instrument a 4% deal would need, even though GHURA's QAP never mentions GEDA or describes how the two agencies would coordinate.

A separate, older public corporation — the Guam Housing Corporation, created under 12 GCA Chapter 4 — is also authorized to issue revenue bonds, but its bond activity found in this research (a COVID-era mortgage relief program, historical single-family mortgage revenue bond issues) is aimed at owner-occupied home purchase financing, not multifamily rental housing. GEDA's own Qualified Mortgage Bond category on its PAB page describes the same single-family homebuyer use. Three different Guam entities, three different roles: GHURA runs the federal LIHTC allocation, GEDA issues private activity bonds including the multifamily rental category, and Guam Housing Corporation's own bond authority is oriented toward single-family homebuyer financing. This research found no evidence that any of the three has actually closed a 4%-credit, GEDA-bond-financed multifamily LIHTC deal.

This research could not reconcile GEDA's own published totals against the federal small-population-floor formula that produced Guam's 9% ceiling. If Guam's private activity bond volume cap under §146(d)(1) used the same floor mechanism as a small state, using Guam's own official population (169,532 for 2025), the 2025 amount would be the floor itself — $388,780,000 per Rev. Proc. 2024-40 §2.20/Notice 2025-18 — several times larger than the $112,165,813 GEDA reports actually allocating that year. This could reflect a different aggregate mechanism Treasury applies to insular areas' total bond ceiling versus the population-based component used elsewhere, a deliberate GEDA choice not to claim its theoretical maximum, or something this research did not uncover. Do not assume either figure is the operative one — confirm Guam's actual usable PAB capacity directly with GEDA.

A real local tax incentive that isn't LIHTC at all: GEDA's Qualifying Certificate program

Separate from federal credits entirely, Guam law gives GEDA its own local tax-incentive tool for affordable housing: the Qualifying Certificate (QC) program under 12 GCA Chapter 58, created by P.L. 8-80 (1965) and amended repeatedly since. Three sections speak directly to affordable housing construction. Section 58127.6, "Development of Affordable Housing," abates Guam's Business Privilege Tax (BPT) "for a period up to twenty (20) years from the effective date of the Qualifying Certificate" on gross receipts from constructing affordable housing, available to a "developer, contractor or subcontractor or a combination of two (2) or more thereof so long as all the receipts the subject of the abatement are derived from the construction of no less than twenty-five (25) affordable housing units." Section 58128.5 pairs with it: "A rebate of one hundred percent (100%) of all income tax paid to the government of Guam" on income from constructing affordable housing, again for up to 20 years, again gated at 25 or more units. Both were added by P.L. 23-135:12(a)-(b), effective January 1, 1997.

A newer section, 58128.7 (added by P.L. 36-131:2, Dec. 28, 2022), extends a scaled-down version of the same benefit to smaller developments — "not less than five (5) but fewer than twenty-five (25) affordable housing units" — with up to a 100% income tax rebate for up to 20 years plus up to 100% use tax exemption on constructing, furnishing, and equipping each unit. Any Qualifying Certificate holder, affordable-housing or otherwise, is also independently eligible for the QC program's general property tax provision, 12 GCA §58127.1: "All taxes now levied by virtue of Chapter 24, Title 11 ... known as the Real Property Tax Law, shall be abated for a period up to ten (10) years from the effective date of the Qualifying Certificate." Stacked together, a 25-plus-unit affordable project could plausibly carry a 20-year BPT abatement, a 20-year 100% income tax rebate on construction income, and a 10-year 100% real property tax abatement — three distinct, statutory local incentives layered on top of (not instead of) federal 9% credits, administered by GEDA rather than GHURA.

One definitional trap sits inside §58128.7 specifically: it defines "'Affordable' where used in this Section" as "up to one hundred thirty percent (130%) and less of the median income average threshold as published annually by the U.S. Department of Agriculture" — not HUD, and not the same area median income bands (50%/60%/80% of HUD's AMI) that govern LIHTC eligibility under the QAP. The statute lets the Guam Housing Corporation adjust that threshold "in consultation with GEDA ... consistent with recommendations from" GHURA, HUD, and USDA, but the base definition as written is USDA-sourced and territory-specific to this one QC subsection — it does not automatically apply to §58127.6 or §58128.5, and "affordable housing" for those two sections is instead left to be "defined by the Authority" (GEDA) without a stated numeric threshold in the statute itself. Do not assume a unit priced or income-qualified under GHURA's LIHTC income limits automatically satisfies whichever "affordable housing" definition a given QC section is using — confirm the applicable definition with GEDA section by section.

The OBBBA bond-financing test is written into federal law, not Guam's QAP

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Pub. L. 119-21, §70422(b)(1), 2025) added a 25%-of-aggregate-basis alternative to the longstanding 50% test under 26 U.S.C. §42(h)(4) for bonds issued after December 31, 2025 — the test that determines whether a project's 4% credits are available as-of-right at all. Several states (Georgia and Illinois among them) have their own administrative QAP language layered on top of that federal test, sometimes tighter than the federal number. Guam has none: because neither GHURA QAP describes a 4% track in the first place, there is no GHURA administrative position on the bond-financing percentage to compare against the federal 25%/50% test. A Guam developer pursuing a bond-financed 4% deal today would be relying purely on the federal test itself, with no territory-specific overlay to check — and, per the sections above, no established GHURA process for how that project's federal credit allocation would actually be issued alongside a GEDA-issued bond.