NMHC joined a coalition of real estate groups in sending a letter to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in urging them to address the severe processing delays that are impeding affordable housing financing in the FHA multifamily and healthcare programs.
The FHA multifamily and healthcare programs have been a critical tool in supporting the creation of additional affordable rental housing. However, processing delays have further impeded this already constrained financing pipeline. Historically, the average time an application spends in the queue waiting to be assigned to an underwriter is one to two months. But according to the HUD Multifamily Accelerated Processing (MAP), lending participants report that the average time an application spends in the queue waiting to be assigned an underwriter is now up to six months.
To mitigate these delays, NMHC and the coalition have recommended both short- and long-term solutions:
- In the short term, HUD should utilize additional contractor resources to supplement the workloads of HUD underwriter staff and consider temporarily redistributing underwriting workloads across regions.
- In the long term, HUD should utilize a balance of permanent and contracted resources. This would include hiring, training, and retaining critical HUD staff across regions, complemented by IT enhancements, together with the flexible use of contracted service providers to manage unexpected or peak demand.
NMHC will continue to work with FHA to streamline these process delays to further support the financing of affordable housing. For additional information on NMHC’s work on this issue, please visit the NMHC advocacy webpage.
