LIHTC · SECTION 42 · TIC
LIHTC compliance should know the project before the TIC is signed.
Unit set-asides, project elections, household eligibility, state/HFA context, layered funding and certification readiness should be part of the property workflow — not notes a specialist has to remember outside the system.
The wrong form, wrong income calculation or misunderstood state requirement is not a small software error. It is an audit problem.
Start with the project rules.
Minimum set-aside, unit designations, project elections, layered programs and the state or HFA profile the project answers to are project facts, and they are recorded once, before the first household is processed.
What follows — which income limit applies, which form the state expects, which unit can take which household — is read from that configuration rather than remembered by the specialist.
Those facts decide the credit, not just the file. Under IRC Section 42 the applicable fraction — the smaller of the unit fraction and the floor space fraction — is what turns eligible basis into qualified basis, so a unit that stops counting as low-income shrinks the credit the deal was underwritten on. The minimum set-aside is a separate test, and a project that elected the Average Income Test made that election its set-aside: designations run in ten-point steps from 20 to 80 percent of area median, each unit is measured against its own designation, and what has to stay at or below 60 percent is the average across the qualifying group. Re-designating a unit is not a free operational move — the imputed limitation on a unit does not simply change, and where a change is permitted at all it turns on written guidance from the agency with jurisdiction over the project.
Build the household record once.
The application already holds the members, the income, the assets and the verification the certification needs. In ExactEstate the certification is started from that record, so a fact the household gave once is not asked for again.
Anything the software asks for twice is something it failed to carry, and a place two versions of the file can start to disagree.
That record is also what the Next Available Unit Rule reads. Once a household’s recertified income passes 140 percent of the applicable income limitation, renting a comparable or smaller unit in that same building to a non-qualifying household costs the over-income units in that building their low-income status — comparable or larger, not just the household that went over. The rule runs building by building rather than project-wide, which is the distinction the regulation gives its own titled paragraph. In a building that is entirely low-income there is no market unit to rent wrong, so the real exposure sits in mixed buildings; where it does bite, units drop out of the applicable fraction, qualified basis falls, and the state agency reports it on Form 8823 line 11i. An Average Income Test project measures that 140 percent against the greater of 60 percent of area median or the unit’s own designation. A layered property runs this test alongside its HUD Multifamily obligations, and neither excuses the other.
Move through the TIC with the correct context.
Initial, recertification or interim
The certification type sets what is asked and what is compared against the prior record.
State form
The Tenant Income Certification is produced in the form the project’s state or HFA expects, where that form is configured for the project.
Approval
The reviewer signs off inside the workflow, and the approval is part of the record.
Final artifact
The approved TIC is frozen. A correction creates a new version with history; nothing overwrites the document an auditor will ask for.
Layer programs without pretending they are identical.
HOME, tax-exempt bond and National Housing Trust Fund are layered program markers on the LIHTC certification, not a second, third and fourth certification workflow — and this page says so plainly.
HOME
Its rent and income restrictions stay visible on the unit and the household alongside the LIHTC limits.
Tax-exempt bond
The bond set-aside is carried as a marker on the same TIC, so a unit under both is checked against both.
National Housing Trust Fund
NHTF restrictions ride the same certification, kept in view rather than filed as a separate form.
HOTMA changes the calculation context, not the need for program-specific review.
HOTMA changed how income and assets are calculated. The date it takes effect is set program by program, by that program’s own authority: HUD Multifamily, public housing and vouchers, and USDA Rural Development do not move on one calendar, and this page does not print a date for any of them.
For a LIHTC project the requirement is whatever its state or HFA has set, and that is what the workflow is configured against. Program-specific review does not go away because the calculation changed.
Predictive Compliance Intelligence is a signal, not a finding.
Predictive Portfolio Intelligence includes a LIHTC compliance-violation risk score. It is a probability that a certification is heading for trouble, and it points at the household and certification context behind the number so a person can look.
It is not a finding, and it does not replace the review. It changes the order the reviewer works in.
Ask EEva what this property carries.
Ask what rules, elections and blockers a property carries and EEva answers from the project’s configuration, names what is blocking the next certification, and shows the public source it relied on beside the answer — drawn from the HUD and Rural Development sources ExactEstate monitors and stages for review.
On this page it works from a sample LIHTC project rather than yours.
