Lintel publishes forward projections of HUD income limits and LIHTC rent ceilings — the numbers that govern every Low Income Housing Tax Credit deal in the United States.
Why this exists
LIHTC underwriters need to know what HUD's income limits will be next April when they're modeling deals today. Until now, they had two options: spreadsheet models maintained by a few specialists with deep methodological knowledge, or Novogradac reports priced at $500 per county. The first is brittle; the second is expensive.
Lintel productizes the projection — same source data HUD uses, same methodology, available for every U.S. county at $149 per report or $299 per month for unlimited access. We add 95% confidence intervals and cap-proximity signals that no other source publishes, because underwriters need to know how much to trust each number, not just what it is.
How we build it
Each projection follows the exact procedure HUD describes in its annual Income Limits Methodology document. We pull median family incomes from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, apply the Congressional Budget Office's per-capita wages forecast, run the high-housing-cost adjustment, the state non-metropolitan minimum, the national 80% maximum, and the year-over-year cap and floor. Then we compute LIHTC maximum rents per IRC § 42(g)(2).
Where we go further: every projection ships with a 95% confidence interval derived from ACS sampling error and CBO forecast variance, and a cap-proximity signal that flags counties whose limits are artificially constrained today and likely to release pent-up upside in future years.
Read the full methodology.
The name
A lintel is the horizontal beam above a doorway that carries the load of the wall above. The word comes from the Latin limitaris, meaning "boundary" — the same root as "limit." The product carries the analytical weight that sits above every LIHTC deal.
Independence
Lintel is not affiliated with HUD, the IRS, the U.S. Census Bureau, the Congressional Budget Office, Novogradac, or any other organization. We rely solely on publicly available government data and the published methodology documents.
Contact
Questions, feedback, feature requests, or want to discuss enterprise access? Email hello@lintel.example.