2019 NMTC Progress Report

The 2019 New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) Progress Report was prepared for the NMTC Coalition, a national membership organization of Community Development Entities (CDEs) and investors organized to advocate on behalf of the NMTC. Every year since 2005, the NMTC Coalition has surveyed CDEs on their work delivering billions of dollars to businesses, creating jobs, and rejuvenating the parts of the country that have been left behind. Our annual NMTC Progress Report presents the findings of the CDE survey and provides policymakers and practitioners with the latest trends and successes of the NMTC.

More than seventy CDEs participated in the survey, and their data was supplemented by publicly available NMTC transaction data.

The 2018 survey findings show that competition for credits continues to drive gains in efficiency. When Congress enacted the NMTC, the purpose of the program was simple: to deliver private-sector investment to low-income communities. Nearly two decades later, the NMTC has unleashed an unprecedented amount of investment in areas struggling with high unemployment and poverty, but more than that, it has created economic opportunity in every corner of the nation.

WHAT’S NEW
• Data on small business loan funds
• Data on the number of people served by a variety of community facility projects
• Data on NMTC utilization in native and tribal lands
• A deeper dive into multi-component projects

This report combines multiple data sources on 2018 NMTC projects.

The primary source is survey data from 74 CDEs and a supplemental survey on small business loan funds. We supplement that data with extensive online research on projects by every CDE with NMTC allocation available in 2018. This year, for the first time, we also integrated data from the Office of the Comptroller of Currency’s National Bank Public Welfare Investment Authority.

For the first time, we asked CDEs to quantify the number of people impacted by their projects. For example, a daycare facility might serve 200 children annually. We supplemented that data with data from QALICB Annual Reports and in several cases, approximation using conservative assumptions. No NMTC project is the same, but the majority of projects involve the construction or rehabilitation of commercial real estate. In 2018, a majority of the projects also included multiple discrete components.

For example, a CDE might finance real estate with low or no-cost space for a mix of five small businesses and nonprofit service providers. To determine tenant businesses and nonprofits for real estate projects, we used a variety of online sources, including websites for the QALICB and data from Loopnet, a commercial real estate listing website. To the best of our ability, we separated out the 286 projects into nearly 600 component parts to determine
the full extent of their impact.

THE FOLLOWING PROVIDED GENEROUS FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR THIS PUBLICATION:
Applegate & Thorne-Thomsen, P.C.
Baker Tilly Capital, LLC
Butler Snow LLP
Capital One
Chase
Dakotas America
Dentons US LLP
Future Unlimited Law PC
Ginsberg Jacobs LLC
Holland & Knight LLP
Kutak Rock LLP
Leverage Law Group LLC
Mascoma Community Development
Nelson & Nelson PLLC
Stonehenge Capital
Wesbanco Bank, Inc.

The New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) Coalition is a national membership organization that advocates on behalf of the NMTC program. The Coalition, which now includes more than 150 members, is managed by Rapoza Associates, a public interest lobbying, policy analysis and government relations firm located in Washington, DC. Paul Anderson is the principal author and designer of this report.