IRVINE, CA—With people spending a greater percentage of their income on housing, affordable housing is an emerging and much-needed growth market, Ned Huffman, president of Ohio-based Bellwether Enterprise tells GlobeSt.com. Last month, the firm opened up an office in Irvine and is playing up its strengths as a subsidiary of Enterprise Community Investment, Inc., a firm with a strong presence in the affordable community. We spoke with Huffman about the new office and developments in the affordable arena.

GlobeSt.com: What prompted the opening of the Irvine office?

Huffman: When we did the merger with Enterprise's mortgage operation two years ago, we knew that Enterprise has a fairly significant presence on the West Coast. It was always our intention to expand out in the western region to provide the clients Enterprise was working with in that region access to better debt products. We looked at different ways of expanding, and this opportunity came up with Trent Brooks. It was a terrific way to go about it because he has a lot of great relationships out there. Our goal was to approach with full service, not just on affordable. We want to build up the lending relationships we have with other parts of the country and use his expertise to expand.

GlobeSt.com: What are the key points we should know about the affordable-housing arena??

Huffman: In our case, we obviously have this tremendous structure with Enterprise as the majority owner of our company. Bellwether's focus in the past has always been market rate, but this was a tremendous opportunity for our company to build a platform that adds affordable housing to the mix and ties it into Enterprise. They made an overall investment in Bellwether, and the majority of our cash flows make their way into the mission of enterprise. It does to support many different things, one of which is a strong policy group in DC and other parts of the country that spends most of their time and energy developing new products in affordable housing and improving living conditions for people around the country. It's a big part of what we're trying to support with the cash flows we're generate.

We do a lot with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA, looking at ways to integrate our products with a lot of the tax-credit syndication work that Enterprise is doing. They're also active in new-market tax credits and supporting commercial activity in different areas. This provides capital that wouldn't be there if not for the tax-credit program, to support the neighborhood where these products are being built. They need to have the infrastructure in place, the food stores and retail and other work environments that are integrated within that living area. What we're trying to do is look at that whole picture and make sure we have products across the board to help support that.

GlobeSt.com: What should we know about the new lending products that are available for the multifamily market?

Huffman: We're trying to do some more proprietary products, providing bridge lending for some deals coming out of their 15- to 20-year affordable period with the idea of trying to keep those properties from being turned into full-market-rate properties. We want to help keep those rents at a reasonable level to serve those markets. We're also trying to encourage insurance companies to look more closely at affordable. They tend to look more at class-A properties, but we're constantly trying to generate interest from them in this category, and it seems to be working.

Another reason for the growth in affordable housing is that it's not as readily available. People are spending a lot of their income on housing. This exists everywhere, although it's more prevalent in some of the bigger cities.

GlobeSt.com: What else should we know about your firm?

Huffman: We're going to have a fairly big announcement in about 30 days. We have a lot of interesting growth in the affordable-housing debt space that we'll be announcing soon.