HUD Announces Multifamily 30-Day Filing Extension

The Office of Housing has authorized a global 30-day extension to all owners with fiscal years that ended Dec. 31, 2013. This extension is being offered to allow owners and auditors additional time to adapt to the requirements of Housing Notice H 2013-23, and the Financial Assessment Subsystem (FASSUB) release on Dec. 6, 2013, which implemented revisions to the HUD Consolidated Audit Guide, Handbook 2000.04. The new filing deadline is now April 30, 2014.

Housing Notice H 2013-23, issued on Aug. 8, 2013, revised the financial reporting requirements for small multifamily housing projects. Specifically, it relieves the owners of small multifamily projects of the burden and cost of submitting audited financial statements. According to the notice, “small multifamily housing project” means a project for which the owner is under an obligation to submit an audited financial statement but receives less than $500,000 in combined federal financial assistance.

Owners for these small multifamily projects will continue to submit financial statements to HUD electronically via the Real Estate Assessment Center’s Financial Assessment Subsystem-Multifamily (FASS-MF). The financial statement is to be presented in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) including a full set of notes to financial statements. However, owner-certified submissions won’t contain an auditor’s opinion or an auditor’s report on compliance and internal controls. The notice applies to project owners with a fiscal year-end date of Dec. 31, 2013, and thereafter. 

In order to submit the owner-certified financial statement, owners had to wait for FASSUB to complete its scheduled update. And on Dec. 6, 2013, the Real Estate Assessment Center implemented a new release of the FASSUB system. New accounts were added to the submission templates to be in compliance with revisions to the HUD Consolidated Audit Guides, Handbook IG2000.04. The revised IG2000.04 required additional accounts to be added to the Schedule of Findings and Questioned Costs and eliminated two auditor reports (Auditor’s Report on Non-major Programs and the Auditor’s Report on Affirmative Fair Housing).