2013 OHCS Bond Income Limits Excel Workbook.

IRS guidance for the SF revenue bond and MCC programs provide for a standard 115% of median family income limit for 3+ persons and 100% of median income for 2 or less persons as the standard income limit calculation for SF revenue bonds (and MCC programs). 

However those standard income limits can be increased if any area is determined to have a high cost to income ratio.The cap on eligible incomes for those areas is 140% of area median family income limits for 3+ persons and 100% of area median income for 2 or less persons. (The target area income limit remains at 140%/120% of the highest of area, state, or national median incomes). 

Surprisingly, I was unable to find any public spreadsheet where the detailed method to calculate these high cost to income areas had been documented. (This despite NCSHA estimates that in 2011 59,000 families received SF MRB loans or MCC's, fairly close to the 63,000 LIHTC units placed in service in 2011 that I count in the HUD LIHTC database.  
(No doubt the details required to calculate these limits are the problem; my Excel workbook below took 5 inputs and 16 formulas to calculate the results for each county). 

I am please to say that after working with OHCS over the last month, I was able to put together an Excel workbook HERE , and embedded below, which has my detailed 2013 calculations for Oregon of what maximum income limits could be. I say "could be" because bond issuers (including users of MCC's) can decide to adopt a lesser limit than what IRS would permit. 

The first worksheet is a lookup table that allows users to select a county and see the most relevant data and the final income limits. The second worksheet is the detailed formulas and inputs for all Oregon counties. The third worksheet includes to links to relevant income data on the web. (If embedded post does not allow county selection, download the workbook, lookup worksheet is set up to allow you to select counties but not values below).

In addition to producing the maximum limits for Oregon counties for 2013, the workbook could be used to do updates next year, by copying and pasting in updated values for the average purchase price and median income (columns 2-6) in the workbook. (For my national readers, the formulas in the workbook should work for any state in the country). The workbook comes with usual caveats that it is my best estimate, should not be used for official purposes, subject to revisions, etc.




Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.