Dane Isaac Insights

FHA Multifamily Loans Take 9 to 12 Months to Close. The Faster Fix Is Administrative.

dave_opalek@dane-isaac.com (David Opalek) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 13:00:00 GMT

USDA and HUD Agree to Coordinate Reviews and Inspections for Rural Housing

dave_opalek@dane-isaac.com (David Opalek) — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Opportunity Zones 2.0: Governors Redraw the Map by September 28

dave_opalek@dane-isaac.com (David Opalek) — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Opportunity Zones ended up as a housing program. Investors put roughly $112 billion into the original zones through 2024, and about three-quarters of OZ capital went to real estate, with multifamily leading. An Economic Innovation Group working paper found designation raised net residential address growth in those tracts by roughly 70%, adding more than 416,000 homes through the first quarter of 2025. In Ohio, the Urban Institute found 64% of OZ capital went to housing or mixed-use projects.

FY2027 Fair Market Rents Arrive With a New Utility Methodology

dave_opalek@dane-isaac.com (David Opalek) — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:00:00 GMT

HUD sets Fair Market Rents every year for every housing market in the country, and those numbers do far more than cap what a Housing Choice Voucher will pay a landlord. FMRs set payment standards for the entire voucher program, they set renewal rents for expiring Project-Based Section 8 contracts, and they set rent ceilings under HOME and Emergency Solutions Grants. For any HUD or FHA-backed multifamily deal built around assisted or voucher-supported rent, the FMR published each September is the number lenders and investors underwrite against for the next twelve months.

The ROAD to Housing Act Raises the RAD Cap to 555,000 Units

dave_opalek@dane-isaac.com (David Opalek) — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Public housing authorities have spent more than a decade leaning on the Rental Assistance Demonstration program to solve a problem federal appropriations never fully solved: funding the rehabilitation of aging public housing stock. RAD lets an authority convert units off the pure public housing subsidy platform and onto Section 8, and that conversion is what unlocks financing. Once a property sits on a long-term, HUD-backed rental assistance contract instead of an annual public housing appropriation, owners can borrow against it, and private debt and equity has flowed in on that basis for years. More than 100,000 units have converted under RAD since the program began, making it the default financing tool for authorities sitting on capital needs their budgets cannot cover.

HUD's Work Requirement Proposal Makes Tenant Eligibility a Market-by-Market Variable

dave_opalek@dane-isaac.com (David Opalek) — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Federal rental assistance, public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, Project-Based Vouchers, and Project-Based Rental Assistance, has for decades supported non-elderly, non-disabled households without conditioning that support on employment or capping how long a family can stay enrolled. Fewer than 1 percent of public housing agencies currently operate any work requirement. That uniformity has mattered for underwriting deals backed by these subsidy streams, since owners and lenders could generally assume consistent tenant eligibility rules across markets.

California Awards $239 Million in Gap Financing to 20 Stalled Affordable Housing Projects

dave_opalek@dane-isaac.com (David Opalek) — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT

California has thousands of affordable housing units sitting at the finish line: entitled, designed, and construction ready, but not yet built. Getting a project that far normally means it is close to breaking ground, since the remaining step is assembling a capital stack anchored by tax-exempt bond financing or Low-Income Housing Tax Credits.

The LIHTC Carryback Bill Targets Investor Demand, Where Credit Pricing Is Under Pressure

dave_opalek@dane-isaac.com (David Opalek) — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT

A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate this month goes after the demand side of the LIHTC market, and it deserves more attention than it has gotten. Senators Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) introduced the Affordable Housing Credit Carryback Act (S. 5366) on August 7, referred to the Finance Committee the same day. It would extend the carryback period for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit from one year to five. A House companion, introduced in May by Reps. Mike Carey (R-OH) and Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), has been pending in Ways and Means since the spring.

JPMorganChase Commits $750 Billion to Housing. Where It Lands in the Capital Stack Is the Question.

dave_opalek@dane-isaac.com (David Opalek) — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT

JPMorganChase announced on August 3 that it will deploy $750 billion through 2035 to increase U.S. housing supply and support homeownership, an increase of more than $200 billion, roughly 40%, over what the bank put into housing in the prior decade. It is the largest housing capital commitment any single bank has made public, and the mechanics behind it matter more than the topline number.

The Senate's Continuing Resolution Keeps Vouchers Funded Through December 11 and Settles Nothing for FY27

dave_opalek@dane-isaac.com (David Opalek) — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Senate appropriators released text of a bipartisan continuing resolution on August 2, and the housing-specific mechanics inside it deserve more attention than the topline "government stays open" framing suggests. The bill extends federal funding through December 11, a week longer than the House's version, and it arrives because the Senate Appropriations Committee still has not reached the topline spending agreement needed to move a full-year FY27 THUD bill. That deadlock means HUD's rental assistance and homeless programs are running on a patch, not a resolution.