Affordable Housing Resources?

[Joshua Nicholas]

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping someone can help me with this as I've tried to figure out this game by myself to no avail.

I have a project I'm looking at that's 80 units, vacant and needs a full gut rehab. I can get really fantastic terms on the property and from comparing rental rates between market rent and HUD Fair Market Guidelines I think there's a big opportunity in making the deal a Project Based Section 8 building.

If we make that deal with HUD, we can refinance and get 90% LTV with 35 year amortization, fixed rate on a non-recourse basis with the FHA 223(F) program.

I'm just having some issues learning more about the entire affordable housing space whether it's LIHTC, Project Based Section 8, regular Section 8, etc. and I can't figure out whether this is a good idea vs going regular section 8 or just renting it to market rate tenants then refinance and just hold it indefinitely. 

I don't know the pros and cons aside from the possible difficulty in selecting good tenants and dealing with government agencies. I thought the complexity of learning the laws about rent stabilization in NYC was difficult but this is even more daunting and complicated.

Can anyone direct me to some resources that can help me learn about this space? 

Thank you for your help.