SEB provides housing development and planning services for both public and private sector developments. Our experience covers more than 180 cities and towns in Massachusetts and we have permitted over 9,000 units of mixed-income housing in Massachusetts. Our work has included a broad range of housing types –most recently focusing on large mixed income rental developments as well as small to mid-size homeownership communities, both condominiums and fee simple. Our widely diverse experience also includeslarge HOPE VI developments as well as co-housing communities in suburban and rural areas.
We provide a range of services to assist with affordable housing planning and development. We work with stakeholders to ensure the effective management of development including everything from planning and permitting through occupancy. As SEB also develops its own properties, we understand all aspects of development, from original concept to final sell-out/lease up.
Development Services: SEB can help your development team navigate state and local zoning regulations, permitting, and the procurement of alternative financing. Our team works with developers and local officials to ensure that the development programs (e.g. 40B, LIP, 40R, Local Action Units, Special Permits, etc.) are fully understood, most notably the respective programmatic and financing requirements. We prepare all the requisite paperwork and applications and spearhead the team through the public hearing process, to the extent requested by the developer. SEB has prepared and reviewed development pro formas, negotiated with local officials, neighbors and developers, and successfully leveraged local, state, and federal subsidies using almost every available affordable housing financing source.
Housing Lotteries: SEB helps developers and management companies avoid many of the perils and challenges associated with affordable unit lease-up and/or affordable unit for-sale transactions. We serve in a soup-to-nuts capacity and handle all of the affirmative marketing, application processing, compliance ,documentation creation and updating and much of the interaction with prospective tenants and affordable home buyers. We also can be retained on a re-occurring basis to make sure that properties are maximizing their affordable rents as median incomes, interest rates, tax rates and/or utility allowance schedules frequently change which impact affordable sales prices and/or rents. Most notably, we specialize in making sure developers stay compliant with all of the programmatic requirements that frequently change on an annual basis.
Chapter 40B Housing: Chapter 40B Housing is a program created by Massachusetts to allow developers to override local zoning bylaws in order to increase the stock of affordable housing in developing towns and neighborhoods. No entity has permitted more units of housing under Chapter 40B than SEB, having permitted over 9,000 affordable housing units across the State. SEB enables developers to make informed decisions and select effective strategies to achieve the most favorable outcome in the least amount of time possible.
Contact us today or call us at (617) 782-2300 to learn how SEB can help you build new homes in Massachusetts.
