The Iowa Finance Authority (IFA) recently released the state’s proposed 2012 Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) and an overview of significant changes to the plan, which includes:

  • The authority has expanded the number of set-asides to five from four with the inclusion of the Community Housing Development Organization (CHDO) and Rural set-asides and the elimination of the Reserved set-aside;
  • IFA has set the Tax Credit Cap at $1,200,000 in credits for a single developer, down from $1,500,000 per developer in 2011;
  • The Market Study fees due at the time the application is submitted have been updated;
  • The Compliance Monitoring fee has been increased to $25 per unit multiplied by the number of total project units;
  • A Late fee equal to the total amount of the Application fee will be assessed for any late submission of the Carryover and 8609 applications or fees;
  • IFA may now require the applicant to provide annual financial statements for the project developer and the ownership entity;
  • Projects will be required to maintain a vacancy rate between seven and nine percent which is a decrease from the previous vacancy rate of between eight and ten percent;
  • IFA has also proposed to reduce Developer and Builder fees for both new construction and acquisition/rehab 9% deals;
  • The construction contingency for 9% new construction tax credit projects is now equal to no more than 5 percent of total hard costs, down from 7 percent in 2011. In addition, acquisition/rehab, preservation, adaptive reuse and historic preservation projects now have a construction contingency equal to no less than eleven percent and no more than fourteen percent of total hard costs;
  • IFA has increased the minimum unit rehab expenditure to $25,000;
  • IFA has made several changes to the application Scoring Criteria.

IFA will be accepting public comments about the draft 2012 QAP until 4:30 pm on November 22, 2011. Comments may be submitted to Dave Vaske via email at
qappubliccomment@iowa.gov, by fax at (515) 725-4901, or by mail:

Attn: Dave Vaske, Housing Tax Credit Manager
Iowa Finance Authority
2015 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50312

The Authority will also hold a public hearing regarding the draft 2012 QAP on November 22 from 9:00 to 11:00 am at the Iowa Finance Authority located at 2015 Grand Avenue in Des Moines, Iowa.

Applications for the 2012 Low-Income Housing Tax Credit funding round are due by 4:30 pm on February 3, 2012. Developers who plan to submit an application for the 2012 LIHTC funding round must attend one of four housing tax credit developers meetings being held in December. Questions about this meeting may be submitted to Katie Kulisky at katie.kulisky@iowa.gov.

To read the proposed 2012 QAP and find out more about the QAP public hearing and mandatory developers meetings, click here.