Housing Finance

The Housing Finance group has experience with virtually every type of financing structure used in the housing bond market, as well as with the restructuring of bond issues. Housing bond issues for which we have been bond or underwriters counsel have included a variety of features, many of which now seem commonplace, but many of which we helped create or refine, such as:

• Mortgage loan sales and bond defeasance
• Tax-exempt real estate loans (private placement pass-through documentation)
• Rehabilitation loans (including rehab loan advances)
• Variable rate or adjustable rate bonds
• Cash-collateralized short-term multifamily bonds
• “Year 15” recapitalization structure
• Put bonds (tender option bonds)
• Convertible option bonds
• Compound interest bonds
• Senior/subordinate bonds, including multiple levels
• Taxable/tax-exempt combinations
• Low-income housing tax credits
• Interest-only strips to finance down-payment assistance
• Letters and lines of credit
• Issuer (“captive”) single-family mortgage insurance
• GNMA and FNMA pass-through certificates
• FNMA collateralized security structures
• Variable rate, renegotiable rate, growing equity, graduated payment and shared appreciation mortgages
• Deferred payment second mortgages
• Forward purchase agreements for bonds
• Refunding/recycling programs
• “Index option” pricing of bonds
• FHA risk-sharing multifamily mortgage insurance
• Real estate investment trusts
• Various derivative products designed to lower borrowing costs or hedge interest rate risk, including interest rate caps, swaps and swaptions