Summit recently worked with The Center for Housing Policy, Compass Working Capital, and the National Housing Conference to develop a set of publications on "lifecycle cost underwriting" for affordable rental housing. Summit's work focused on applying the lifecycle cost methodology to compare the costs of two methods of producing multifamily affordable housing: new construction and acquisition-rehab. Our findings indicate that, controlling for several important factors, acquisition-rehab is generally a more cost-effective method of affordable housing production from a lifecycle cost perspective. The full text of this research can be found at the National Housing Conference's website.
