CARH’S BROADCAST E-MAIL – Member Update

July 26, 2016

On July 21, 2016, USDA held a rural housing data launch for interested stakeholders. CARH member, ApartmentSmart.com attended the launch and provided CARH with the following summary:

“PolicyMap is a tool that aggregates and maps data on nationwide to local scales. They have recently incorporated USDA data into their service. The public facing service is at https://www.policymap.com/maps.

Users can select any data point from any featured data category such as Demographics, Income and Spending, Housing and Quality Of Life. The featured use case was plotting two USDA data sets against each other – RD Multi-Family and USDA Food Access. Users can continue to add and filter data sets as you like, for example filter Multi-Family properties by Management Company or Total Units.

Other examples included identifying RD properties without access to broadband or under-served low income rural areas.

Raw data specific to Rural Development is still available at  https://www.sc.egov.usda.gov/data/data_files.html which does seem to be updated regularly but the formatting and data sets have not changed.

Full USDA data sets are available through the portal at https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products.aspx.“

While the PolicyMap tool is very useful, it does not provide information on maturing mortgage data (see CARH’s broadcast email of May 19, 2016). However, an additional launch will be held on August 2 that will be referred to as the “Property Exit Tool.” This tool will make information on the Rural Housing Service’s multi-family portfolio, including potential dates for properties to exit the program, available to the public. A representative from ApartmentSmart.com will attend that launch and CARH will provide an update on this additional tool and the information that will be available to borrowers and public on maturing mortgages.

CARH will continue to keep our members updated on any relevant updates. If you have any questions, please contact CARH at 703-837-9001 or carh@carh.org.