Update on the Multifamily Transformation

As you may recall, in April 2013, HUD announced plans for a major restructuring initiative for its Multifamily Housing Division.  Wave 1 (of 5) of this initiative is now well underway and HUD has released some helpful Question and Answers to help the industry understand, not only what this reorganization entails, but how it affects the relationship owners and agents have with their local HUD Offices.  This is of particular significance for those contracts that remain HUD-administered.

The transformation calls for significant shuffling of HUD staff to new office locations.  Once completed, HUD is confident that the new model will facilitate better risk management, improved customer service and more consistency across the remaining multifamily offices.  There are four procedural elements to the initiative:

1. To address fluctuations in work volume amongst different regions, HUD will distribute the workload across the country to minimize backlog.
2. HUD will employ a risk-based underwriting and processing in Production.  Applications will be categorized according to risk and complexity before being assigned to an underwriter.  Once categorized, more experienced underwriters will then process the riskier, more complex applications.
3. Multifamily staff will be divided into Account Executives and Troubled Asset Specialists based on individual experience and level of expertise.  Troubled Asset Specialists, a new role, will focus on addressing challenges associated with at-risk assets while Account Executives, formally titled as Project Managers, will focus on the non-troubled portfolio.
4. HUD will be renaming 4 headquarter division offices and consolidating existing HUD Multifamily Field Offices into 10 regional field office locations supporting 5 Hubs.

Read the full version of updated Question and Answers to learn more about this ongoing initiative.