Invest in Affordable Housing, Now

“Affordable is the next product that you should be looking to buy,” said Vic Clark, senior managing director at Hunt Mortgage Group on the Agency Lending Outlook panel at RealShare Apartments. Clark moderated the panel—of speakers Jeffrey Erxleben, EVP and regional managing director at Northmarq Capital Group, Cristina Flynn, director of credit underwriting for the Western Region at Fannie Mae; and John Powell, director of agency production at Bellwether Enterprises—which discussed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lending activity and popular loan products.

“Fannie and Freddie are going to be coming out with products in the next few years for affordable housing,” said Clark, and Erxleben and Powell agreed. “ Both agencies have been robust in rolling out programs to attack affordable in different ways,” said Erxleben, adding that there is a mandate to do that business. Powell said that there has been an evolution away from rent-restricted affordable housing to market-driven affordable housing. “That is addressing the fact that people are spending a lot of income on rent,” he said. “I think Fannie and Freddie will spend a lot more time on workforce housing.”

Flynn was more elusive about the future of affordable housing products. “I think we will have more to come,” she said, adding that the success of the green program is evidence of how much headway that you can make when you create quality products that fulfill demand. “Speaking broadly with what we have seen from the success of green is that when there are incentives, you see growth in the space,” she said.