Topic: Your preference: Affordable or Conventional?

Which do you prefer? Affordable Housing or Conventional? Me, personally - I enjoy both. I slightly prefer Affordable because it's a bit more challenging (for me at least) and there's a lot more math involved. I love conventional because it isn't heavy regulated and I don't have to worry about audits, HUD & the IRS on my case. Also, with conventional - we've had a lot more time to host resident functions and getting everything needed to move someone in is much less stressful. However, there are plenty days when everyone in the office is dying of boredom. However, it's the complete opposite in affordable - weeks feel like days, days feel like hours.

Which do you prefer and why?

If you love accounting, filing, running the numbers and being constantly frustrated, Tax Credit.

If you don't, Conventional.

I'd only go back to Tax Credit if I were starving (never say never).

I like Conventional as one is not as regulated and have 1001 hoops to jump through. I can concentrate more on the facilities and the occupants. Paperwork is a lot less. In Affordable (just my opinion) it is more paperwork and less time being with the facilities and the people (course depending on the size of the property). Now, that being said, of course I would work the Affordable, knowing myself, I would tend to get short tempered with red tape when it does not add value to the tenant and the facility they are living in.

For me, it boils down to where will I make a difference, which is an important part of who I am and how I see myself. Conventional is definitely easier and it can soooooo much fun! Conventional properties allowed me to develop skills I never knew I had. But where I made the most difference and felt the most rewarded were my years in Affordable Housing.

I agree with Mindy on the "rewarding" part. Tax Credit was personally and career rewarding for me. Tax Credit is more challenging in some ways. I loved being able to get someone who really needed a home approved. But I also had to watch people I didn't think were deserving get Section 8 vouchers over others who really needed one. It also drove me crazy that, in our market, a one-person household could get a 2 bedroom apartment when they only needed one and there were some many people waiting who would give anything for a one bedroom, but there was no money left for them.

I would go with conventional housing. :)

The only thing I would NEVER do again...student housing. I've done tax credit, conventional, COA mgmt and student housing. There's nothing as stressful as turning your ENTIRE community between the months of May to July.

Conventional...hands down. I was a property maintenance inspector for a management company with at least three properties bad enough to make it necessary to purchase and carry a ballistic clipboard. The regular state inspections were hard as well. With low paid, poorly qualified techs and low budgets, bringing/keeping these places up to spec just got to be too much.

Well, let me put it this way - I love hiring people from the affordable housing industry. They have a great deal of training and have dealt with many crazy situations where they had to keep their cool. According to one of my managers, when she was in affordable housing she had a tenant that was upset about being evicted. His way of getting back at the property was to purchase rats, throw them in the pool, then call the health department and complain there were dead rats in the pool. Fortunately he was caught on video.

Perhaps it's because we have prime properties etc, but the impression I have from them is conventional housing is piece of cake and they love it. As for myself, having worked in affordable housing, I have no interest in it. Does everyone have to leave the unit with their kid's feces smeared on the wall?

I've worked both sides..Conventional and Affordable...I didn't know there was such a thing as free rent or affordable rent. I thought everyone just worked and paid rent or bought a house. I would only work HUD or USDA if the management company was spot on and the property was in a unique location such as Hawaii or Arizona or maybe Beverly Hills, CA 90210.

Kidding aside; Affordable isn't as difficult as it may seem. You just need to have your ducks in a row.

Either way, it is still a people business. Only with government oversight. Oh joy.

Well, i will prefer affordable housing. :) :)

do you know of any leasing conferences I can attend