The study provides the affordable housing industry with comprehensive data, analysis, and insight into critical performance trends across a surveyed portfolio gathered from more than 30,000 housing units created through tax credit financing.

With industry-wide operating and performance data current through year-end 2024, the 2025 Affordable Housing Credit Study demonstrates that, despite the ongoing economic challenges that have impacted many other sectors, the housing tax credit market continues to be resilient.

Study highlights

Based on the information derived from the survey, key findings include:

• The national LIHTC portfolio continues to show strong occupancy, maintaining a median physical occupancy of 97% in 2024. Most properties remain well-leased, with only a small fraction below 90% physical occupancy, typically due to isolated, property-specific factors.
• Besides construction and financing related challenges, persistent operating challenges drove about a quarter of stabilized properties to operate at below breakeven in 2024. Some markets continued to experience rent collection and operating expense pressures, although these trends are being actively managed with proven strategies and financial safeguards.
• LIHTC investments remain exceptionally strong. The cumulative foreclosure rate is just under 0.5%, with no new foreclosures reported by our data providers since 2021. 

“The findings from our 2025 Affordable Housing Credit Study reaffirmed the growing need for affordable housing across the country and the continued resiliency of LIHTC properties,” said Cindy Fang, Partner and Tax Credit Investment Services Leader. “While the economic aftershocks of the pandemic created vulnerabilities, with nearly 26% of the LIHTC properties nationwide reporting operating deficits in 2024, most properties benefited from layered financial safeguards designed to mitigate foreclosure risk. For institutional investors, LIHTC properties continued to demonstrate resilience and reliability, underscored by a historically low cumulative foreclosure rate of just half of one percent.”

Beth Mullen, CohnReznick Affordable Housing Industry Leader, adds, “Although many anticipated – and our data now confirms – a period of market softness, affordable housing continues to prove its resilience. The enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025 marks a pivotal and encouraging milestone for the industry with the largest expansion of the Housing Credit in a quarter century. As we move forward through ongoing challenges, we invite industry stakeholders to leverage our study as a valuable resource for advocacy support, benchmarking efforts, and collaboration on best practices.” 

To complement the study, CohnReznick also released its newest dataset called the Affordable Housing Credit Tool. Users can access interactive data through an online interface providing the most recent data. Together, the Affordable Housing Credit Study and Credit Tool help the affordable housing community benchmark portfolios, develop best practices, and gain further insights into the industry.