Our team represents a diverse range of clients, including for-profit and nonprofit developers, lenders, investors, governmental agencies, trade associations, and bond issuers and underwriters.
We provide comprehensive advice on all aspects of the HUD housing, FHA, and GNMA programs, the multifamily programs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), and the housing and related tax credit programs of many states. Additionally, we guide clients on the development programs of state and local housing finance agencies and public housing authorities. Our attorneys are active in relevant national professional organizations and trade associations, serving on their boards and speaking regularly at their meetings.
For more than three decades we have worked with virtually every federal multifamily affordable housing funding, development, and subsidy program (and many of their state counterparts), including:
- Federal and state low-income housing tax credits
- Tax-exempt bonds issued pursuant to Sections 142 and 145
- HUD Section 8, Section 9, PRAC, and their PBRA transformations under RAD
- HUD Flexible Subsidy, LIHPRHA and ELIHPA, CDBG, HOME and GRRP
- HUD Section 221, 223, 232 (including LEAN) and 241 financings
- HUD Section 202 loan, capital advance, and subsidy
- USDA loan and rental subsidy programs
- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac multifamily housing programs
- Federal and state historic tax credits
- Public housing/private partnerships
- Opportunity zones
Our attorneys resolve 2530 challenges for owners and managers resulting from REAC/NSPIRE-triggered flags and other matters, and our HUD dispute resolution attorneys have helped clients navigate inspector general audits, Fair Housing disputes, REAC/MOR appeals, and other enforcement difficulties, including matters involving the U.S. Department of Justice.
Our attorneys regularly represent lenders in multifamily, nursing, health care, and seniors’ housing programs of conduits, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and HUD including LEAN. Our services include the documentation and closing of loans secured by projects throughout the U.S. and advising lender clients of rights and remedies flowing from the origination, sale, pooling, securitization, and servicing of multifamily and commercial mortgage loans. We were pioneers in working with shared appreciation and risk share programs, and helped develop warehouse lending programs for banks providing short-term financing for mortgage lenders to address the gap between the disbursement of loan proceeds at closing, and the purchase of the loans by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or the sale of mortgage-backed securities to investors.
Our success has required an awareness and a practical application of the subtleties of the various lending programs under which the loans were made, in addition to variations dictated by the peculiarities of individual jurisdictions such as Mortgage Consolidations (New York, Maryland, and Florida), Texas Title Requirements, and Illinois Land Trusts.
Our lender representations in connection with the programs of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and HUD/FHA include legal support at all levels of the loan closing process, from drafting the loan commitment to delivering loan servicing binders. This requires active coordination with the lender client, borrower’s counsel, lender’s warehouse bank, and the legal staffs of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or HUD. Our services also are engaged regularly in connection with case-specific issue resolution matters to be addressed with the secondary mortgage market and HUD staff.
We have closed billions of dollars in multifamily and commercial loans across the U.S. The core goal is to take whatever steps are necessary to help assure a smooth, event-free, and uninteresting closing. We proceed on the theory that a loan closing is a celebration of the end of a frequently arduous process. This approach serves the dual business interests of the lender by freeing underwriting and origination staff to handle new business and by leaving the borrower with a positive impression of the lender.
