From Urban High-Rise to Bungalow, Florida Developer Debra Koehler Tackles All Kinds of Projects
By Caitlin Jones & A. J. Johnson
4 min read
Tax Credit Advisor, April 2009: Florida tax credit developer Debra Koehler, who specializes in rehabbing and preserving older urban high-rise apartment properties, is spending more of her time these days “selling” her deals, because of the greater difficulty today raising tax credit equity.
“I’ve never been as involved as I am now in who’s actually buying the credits,” she notes. In the past, when it was easy to find a syndicator to buy a project’s low-income housing tax credits, Koehler says the end investor didn’t really concern her. “But now,” she explains, “I’m as active as possible. If [a syndicator] is showing [my project] to [a prospective investor] that I may actually have a relationship with, I’m making phone calls within that organization to let them know that that’s our deal that they’re looking at. I am actively marketing our credits along with the syndicator.”
Koehler, a founder and partner of Tampa-based Sage Partners, LLC, became a developer by career change.
“I was a CPA by training and worked at KPMG,” she notes, where her main clients were real estate developers, banks, and governments. In 1987, Koehler joined The Wilson Company, a Tampa-based real estate firm, in the accounting department. She eventually moved to the development side, working her way up to become a partner in 1992. In 1993, after the commercial real estate slide of 1990-92, “I spearheaded getting into affordable housing, and I was running the affordable housing side of our company.”
During her stint at The Wilson Company, Koehler developed 34 housing credit projects with more than 9,400 units. She left The Wilson Company in 2003, and in 2004 started a real estate company (Atlantic American Realty Group) with an investment banking firm. From 2004 until 2007 she acquired and rehabilitated more than 800 multifamily units in the Tampa area, focusing on first-time home buyers. In October 2007, Koehler and Todd Turner, her other partner, established Sage Partners. The firm operates out of a 1924 bungalow that the two purchased and renovated.
“Our goal is to be small and nimble,” says Koehler. “We’re focusing on Florida, and particularly the Tampa Bay area.”
Sage Partners specializes in a niche – “buying urban [apartment] high rises that are in need of substantial rehab with preservation,” Koehler explains. She honed the skills for this from her past experience in developing affordable apartments, and from her early years at The Wilson Company when she developed, renovated, and repositioned two urban high-rise office buildings. “That, in combination with the residential side, has led me to where we are now,” Koehler notes.
Koehler’s current project is the rehabilitation of a 1971, 11-story, 188-unit apartment tower for senior and disabled tenants in downtown St. Petersburg, called The Columbian, using tax-exempt financing, 4% housing credits, state housing trust funds, a soft second loan from the state, and an Interest Reduction Payments stream decoupled from the existing HUD Section 236 mortgage. HUD has already approved a 20-year renewal of the project-based Section 8 contract for 70% of the units. The $20 million acquisition/rehab project will entail renovations costing in excess of $34,000 per unit. Koehler came across the deal after the prior owner said he didn’t intend to renew the property’s Section 8 contract when it expired in September 2009, but the city wanted to find a way to preserve the property as affordable housing.
The complex and time-consuming process of piecing together the dollars for The Columbia is illustrative of what Koehler says is her biggest challenge today as an affordable housing developer – “trying to obtain all of the sources that you need to make these deals work.”
Koehler is active as well in housing policy circles, her community, and trade groups. She’s been appointed by two Florida governors to serve on the state’s affordable housing study commission; has chaired the boards of the Hillsborough County housing finance agency and the Coalition of Affordable Housing Providers, a statewide developers group; and has headed the board of a local nonprofit that in part teaches women construction skills. Koehler’s also been active for years in the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association, a trade group for affordable multifamily housing developers and related professionals. “It’s the first organization that I joined when I started in affordable housing,” she notes. “I’ve met more contacts in this industry through NH&RA than any other forum.”
A mother of two teenagers, Koehler says she also likes to golf – when she gets the time – and has just taken up biking.
