Historic redevelopment resources for beginners?

[Jonathan Valalik]

Hi everyone,

I've been working as a historic preservation tax credit consultant for a few years and I'd really like to learn more about the redevelopment business. We work mainly with local developers and the idea of rehabilitating buildings on my own is really exciting. I don't know anything about the business side of things and I have no idea where to start.

I was curious if anyone could recommend a few books to get started, but also some sort of idea about a career path/how to transition into that business in the future. Is more education required? Can I use my preservation experience to get an entry level job in that area after I've educated myself somewhat? That kind of thing. 

Thanks in advance for any help,

Jonathan

[Bryan Mills]

Do you have knowledge of the ins and outs of expenditures that qualify/claiming the historic tax credit through your preservation consulting? If not, I'd say a good place to start would be to go to Novogradac's Historic Tax Credit resource center (on their website) and look around. I'd recommend maybe purchasing their book Introduction to Historic Tax Credits.

If you already are familiar with the historic preservation side and the tax credit side, I'd say start finding out which developers are doing projects in the historic space. Do some networking, go to conferences, and meet the people that are in the position you'd like to one day be in.

All of these deals, at their core, are real estate development projects that simply use historic tax credits as a means of financing to make it viable or juice the returns. As follows, what I'd really recommend is to look towards learning more in the commercial real estate arena if you'd ultimately like to generate your own historic projects. Otherwise, you will not get exposure to how the deals are structured, who the big players are, what types of properties are commonly used, etc.

Being on the legal side, I know these deals can be quite complex, as there are lots of limitations and tax regulations, which is magnified as outside investors or banks often join the projects and utilize the credits. On that note, you may also look to banks that are heavily involved in the space and see if they have a position that interests you.