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At the risk of upsetting my HUD friends, we have been constructing FHA housing for all of my 28 years with the company.  We started with the straight HUD insured loan program, often coupled with Section 8 rent subsidies.  It took a year to close these.  To speed it up, they went to the “co-insured” HUD program, which sped it up to 12 months.  To speed it up further, they went to the HUD “fast track”, which did speed it up to approximately 52 weeks.  To further enhance it, they went to “ultra fast track”, which sped it up to – you guessed it – about 365 days to close.  The MAP Program (Multi Family Accelerated Processing) was initiated to further enhance the speed of closing, and it took approximately one year. 

So in 2009 they initiated the “LEAN” Program for assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing. LEAN was intended to be a single step process, taking 4 – 5 months.  Now 10 months into the program very few people know how long this process will take, but a year looks optimistic.  The one step process has gone to two, and in the current financial market it has been difficult for HUD to keep up with the demand as alternative financing sources have been limited.  Even with our corporate focus on HUD lending, we have not seen a market acceptance letter (first phase of the approval) in the ten months the program has been in effect.

HUD has recently come out with new guidelines, which I’m hoping will help, but we will see.  Generally, as a contractor, when bank lending slows down, we look for HUD to fill part of the gap.  It usually works, particularly when there is a Democrat in the Oval Office.  But it hasn’t yet. Is accelerated HUD financing real?  Or an illusion?