Get the TIC signed from the household record.
Send the TIC, lease and recertification notices for signature with ExactSign, included in Core. Residents and staff sign from any phone.
LIHTC SOFTWARE BUYER GUIDE
Don’t buy LIHTC software until it can prove the whole TIC.
Your state form, income verification, project election and layered funding can’t be reduced to a “LIHTC supported” checkbox. Use this buying guide to challenge vendors on the actual certification file—and bring that same file to an ExactEstate demo.
The test isn't whether the vendor says 'LIHTC.' It's what happens when the property has exceptions.
Ask about the project election before you trust the TIC.
Ask the vendor to set up the project as it actually exists: its minimum set-aside, applicable elections, state HFA, supporting documentation and layered requirements. Then watch what happens when information is missing.
Good LIHTC software knows the project elections, the unit designations, the rent and income limits actually in force, household composition, income and assets, the state or HFA context and its forms, the requirements tied to HOME, bonds or NHTF on the property, and where each recertification stands and who approved it.
A system that holds those as property facts behaves differently from one that holds them as fields somebody filled in. You find out which you are looking at by asking it a question that requires knowing them.
Make the vendor work through an actual over-income recertification. Can it show the project’s Average Income Test election if applicable, calculate the relevant threshold and track the Next Available Unit Rule by building? Ask to see affected comparable-or-smaller units and the review trail—not just a generic 140% warning.
ExactEstate flags the building and lists its over-income households, so your specialist picks the next comparable unit with the facts in front of them. See how ExactEstate’s LIHTC compliance software handles each of these.
Bring a real LIHTC file to every software demo.
Anyone can show a blank TIC form. Make the demo start with a real household record and continue through validation, review and the state form or supported export.
Then recertify the same household and watch which facts carry forward on their own and which have to be typed again.
Layered HOME and bond rules need more than a checkbox.
A property with multiple funding sources tests whether the software can keep distinct rules straight—not simply display multiple badges.
"Supports layered funding" is a sentence, and sentences are cheap. Put your actual project stack in front of the system and watch what it does with a unit that carries two programs whose requirements disagree. If you run more than one program, see how affordable housing compliance software keeps each program’s rules apart.
Let specialists make the decisions. Let software handle the busywork.
Good software refuses to decide anything it does not have the facts for. Ask each vendor to show you a case their software refuses to decide.
A system with no refusal cases is not more capable. It will produce an answer whether or not it has what the answer requires, and you will not find out which until an audit.
The good version names what is missing: the election that was never recorded, the jurisdiction whose rule has not been configured, the authority it could not cite.
The questions that separate a good demo from a good product.
Ask these nine questions, in the same order, against one project from your own portfolio. Vendors control their own demos, so comparing them means bringing the scenario yourself and staying on it. Pick your layered property if you have one. Copy or print the list; it is not a lead form.
- Project setup. Show where the system holds the minimum set-aside election, unit designations and the income and rent limits in force. Ask where the TIC reads each one from.
- One household, application to TIC. Certify a real household from your files. Count each fact that has to be typed twice.
- The 140 percent recert. Recertify that household above 140 percent of the limit. Ask what the system does about the available unit rule, building by building.
- A layered unit. Run a unit carrying LIHTC plus HOME or Section 8. Ask which limit wins and where the screen shows it.
- HOTMA. Ask how the asset threshold, updated deductions and the medical-expense phase-in are applied, and whether the adoption date is set per property. Score your own readiness first with the free HOTMA compliance assessment.
- State reporting. Ask which state TIC form and HFA export it produces for your state, and look at the actual file.
- A refusal case. Ask for a case the system will not decide, and what it says is missing.
- The file history. Ask who generated, approved and verified each certification, and where that is recorded.
- The price. Ask for the per-unit price in writing, covering each program the property carries.
