How the AI Q&A works
The Pro AI Q&A platform answers practitioner questions about LIHTC, OBBBA, bond financed-by mechanics, QAP scoring, capital stack design, FHA/GSE products, Year 15 exits, RAD, and the rest of the affordable housing finance corpus covered on this site. Each answer cites the underlying statutory, regulatory, or guidance source — never invents facts, never confidently invents a section number. When the source is ambiguous or recent, the answer flags the uncertainty explicitly.
The Q&A is grounded in the same corpus you see published on the site — every federal program page, every state HFA framework, every FHLB district page, every published article — plus the underlying primary sources those pages cite. It is not a general-purpose chatbot; it is a domain-tuned assistant for the affordable housing finance practitioner.
Example Q&A — free preview
Below are three real example questions and the kind of answers the platform produces. The full Q&A interface is below; it is reserved for Pro members.
For a 4% LIHTC + tax-exempt bond deal with bonds issued in March 2026, what financed-by test applies?
The post-OBBBA 25% financed-by test applies. Under IRC § 42(h)(4) as amended by P.L. 119-21 (One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted July 4, 2025), bonds issued after December 31, 2025 trigger 4% LIHTC eligibility if at least 25% of the building's aggregate basis is financed by tax-exempt bonds (down from the pre-OBBBA 50%). One structural requirement: at least 5% of aggregate basis must come from post-December-31-2025 bond issuances — so a project that combines carryforward bond cap from 2024-2025 with new 2026 bonds must verify the 5% minimum is satisfied from the 2026 tranche.
In Texas, can I score the 9% LIHTC application under both the at-risk preservation set-aside and the urban region allocation?
No — applications in Texas compete for one or the other, not both. TDHCA's QAP separates the statewide at-risk set-aside (which competes against other at-risk applications across all 13 regions) from the regional allocation formula (which competes against other non-set-aside applications within the assigned region). An applicant must elect at submission. Practitioner consideration: at-risk applications typically face a smaller competitive pool, but the underwriting standards (existing affordability restrictions, expiring contracts, scoring on preservation factors) are distinct from the new-construction-oriented regional competition. Confirm against the current Texas QAP at the time of application.
My project will use HOME funds as a soft loan, not a grant. Does that avoid the federal subsidy basis reduction on 9% credits?
Generally yes — but with care. IRC § 42(i)(2)(D) reduces eligible basis by the amount of any federal grant used to finance the project. A HOME loan (not a grant) does not trigger the haircut, provided the loan has bona fide repayment obligations. The IRS has consistently treated below-market HOME loans with deferred-payment structures as loans rather than grants for § 42 purposes, as long as the documentation reflects a genuine debt. The trigger to watch for: forgivable provisions or contingent repayment terms so soft that the IRS could recharacterize the loan as a grant. Document the loan as a hard obligation with a defined repayment schedule (even if interest-only or balloon), record the lien, and have HOME counsel review the documents. Note also that HOME funds always reduce basis when used on 4% LIHTC + bond deals because of the financed-by interaction — different rule.
Ask a question
Ask the Q&A platform anything.
Pro members can submit unlimited questions and get cited, source-grounded answers about LIHTC, OBBBA, capital stacks, QAP scoring, RAD, FHA/GSE products, and everything else covered on this site.
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Scope and limits
The Q&A platform is best for practitioner questions of moderate specificity — questions where there is a real statutory, regulatory, or guidance source on point. It is less helpful for:
- Deal-specific underwriting. The Q&A doesn't know your project's pro-forma, sponsor balance sheet, or syndicator equity pricing. It can explain how those inputs interact, not what numbers to use.
- Pricing predictions. Equity pricing, debt rates, MIP rates — these change frequently and are best confirmed with current sources, not asked of the Q&A.
- Legal advice. The platform is educational. It does not substitute for tax counsel, bond counsel, or land use counsel on any specific deal.
Related: The Claude Pack
If you already use Claude (the AI assistant from Anthropic) for your own work, the Claude Pack ($79 one-time) gives you the same domain-tuned prompts, templates, and reference data that power the Pro Q&A — but for use directly in your own Claude account. The Claude Pack and the Pro Q&A are complementary, not competing: one is integrated with your existing AI workflow; the other is a hosted question-answering service. Many practitioners use both.
Disclaimer
The Pro AI Q&A is educational content and is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Practitioners should verify any specific statutory citation, regulatory provision, or guidance document referenced in an answer before relying on it for a transaction. The platform's training cutoff and source corpus are documented on the methodology page; practitioners should be aware that very recent regulatory developments may not yet be reflected in answers. Always confirm with qualified counsel and current primary sources.