One large transaction is revitalizing nearly 1,400 rural housing units across Georgia.
The $117 million pooled bond transaction is the first of its kind in the state, according to the financing team behind the deal.
The transaction allowed WWJ, an affiliate of Boyd Management, to acquire 44 properties with 1,362 affordable housing units in more than two dozen counties. The Georgia Preservation Portfolio is made up of U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Sec. 515 properties that are home to families and seniors earning no more than 60 percent of the area median income.
WWJ was managing all of the developments, and its team or a related party was a general partner in a majority of them. It took the next step to buy the aging properties from multiple limited partners and sellers to rehab the communities and ensure the properties’ long-term viability.
Working with Greystone Affordable Housing Initiatives, the team bundled the projects into a single tax-exempt bond deal. There is no statewide bond issuer for deals of this type in Georgia, so the team had to get approval from about 30 different municipalities for the Athens Housing Authority to take on the bond issuance.
“Without these types of bond portfolio transactions, these properties would never be able to be rehabilitated,” says Joe Wilczewski, WWJ member. “Typically, in the rural markets, it’s difficult to get a conventional loan to rehabilitate a property.”
