Affordable housing plays a vital role in communities nationwide, supporting nearly 7 million households and over 13 million individuals. From retirees on fixed incomes to veterans, working families, and people with disabilities, affordable housing provides critical stability. With the need for affordable housing outpacing supply, having access to reliable, up-to-date data is more critical than ever.
That’s where the National Housing Preservation Database (NHPD) comes in.
Maintained by the Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation, HAI Group’s research division, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the NHPD is a detailed deduplicated property-level list of federally assisted rental properties nationwide. Whether you're an advocate, policymaker, researcher, or affordable housing provider, the NHPD is a powerful tool for preservation planning, advocacy, and decision-making. Some of the specific ways the NHPD has been used include 
In this blog, we’ll dive into how affordable housing providers can use the NHPD to search for affordable housing properties, and inform advocacy, identify at-risk properties.
Getting started with the NHPD
Database Breakdown
The NHPD’s filtered grid is a user-friendly tool ideal for quick, targeted searches of specific properties. After logging in, users can apply a range of filters, such as location, subsidy program, and expiration date, to create customized views of the database. For instance, users can easily find all low-income housing tax credit properties in Chicago, Illinois, with subsidies expiring in the next five years by applying the relevant filters.
With the filtered grid, you can easily:
- Create custom data extracts by dragging and dropping fields
- Expand rows by clicking the arrow to the left of each property to view detailed subsidy information
- Export your filtered results to share with your community and interested stakeholders
For more advanced analysis, the NHPD also offers downloadable pre-packaged data extracts that provide a comprehensive view of property and subsidy data in a flat table format.
NHPD tools for success
The NHPD is more than a database—it is a collection of data, tools, and resources to help affordable housing stakeholders use data-driven insights in their work. Whether you need data to inform strategic planning, a simple, polished summary of affordable housing in your area for advocacy meetings, or a mapping tool to help you visualize affordable housing in your area, the NHPD has the tools and resources for you.
NEW: Preservation Risk Dashboard
The Preservation Dashboard visualizes risks impacting the affordable housing stock by region for advocates, stakeholders, and policymakers.
To use the dashboard, select state, county, or congressional district and then use the dropdowns on the left-hand side to filter your area of interest. You can export the dashboard as a PDF by clicking 
or as an image by clicking 
.
The NHPD Mapping Tool
The NHPD Mapping Tool offers an interactive way to explore affordable housing in your area.
To get started, use the filter panel on the left side of the map to select the criteria that matter most to you, such the primary funding stream, number of bedrooms per unit, or total unit count. You can also zoom to your area of interest using the in the bottom right corner. To view a summary of the characteristics of properties that have been filtered, click the
in the top right corner.
The Nearby Tool provides two ways to explore properties based on proximity. You can drop a point on the map to find properties within a specific radius of your area of interest or draw a custom area using the polygon feature.
Properties are color-coded by their primary funding stream to make it easy to quickly visualize the subsidies that support affordable homes in your area of interest. To view the legend that explains each color, simply open the legend icon 
.
How you can use the nation’s only deduplicated list of affordable rental properties
Interested in getting started? The NHPD user guide was recently updated to include step-by-step instructions to use the NHPD to identify properties at risk of loss, create a local preservation database, locate LIHTC properties approaching year 15, and find specific properties.
Webinars, video tutorials, and a new FAQ page are also available to help you navigate and make the most of the data.
Now, let’s dive into common ways affordable housing providers have used the NHPD.
Looking up specific properties
Do you want to investigate a particular affordable rental property? Whether you are a PHA, investor, developer looking to preserve affordable housing in your community, or an individual looking for housing assistance, the NHPD is a great resource for finding a property that meets your goals.
There are multiple different ways to locate your property of interest and find detailed information about the property using the NHPD. Beyond our filtered grid and prepackaged data extracts, you can also access the Mapping Tool to aid you by searching for a specific property or simply visualize affordable housing in your area.in your search.
To locate your property, follow these tips:
- Search as many fields as possible in the filtered grid, including:
- Property name
- Address
- Street name
- If nothing comes up, try using just a keyword. For example, if the property is called The Pines, search for just “Pines” in case the name appears differently in the database
- Use the Mapping Tool to view the property’s footprint
- Google the property if it isn’t in the NHPD
Once you locate your property of interest, you will be able to see the rental subsidies that assist the property, their expiration dates, the owner’s name and type, manager’s name and type, latest REAC/NSPIRE score if applicable, and more.
Identifying at-risk properties
By leveraging data from the NHPD, users can assess their local affordable housing stock and develop strategies to maintain long-term affordability. For example, Montgomery County, Maryland, used the NHPD to identify affordable properties that were nearing the expiration of their affordability restrictions that were located in low-poverty neighborhoods, near rail transit, serving the lowest-income populations, and were owned by for-profit organizations in their preservation study to aid their long-term strategic planning. Other regions that have used the NHPD to inform preservation plans include:
- The City of Anderson, Indiana, in their 2024 Annual Action Plan
- New Hampshire’s Housing Finance Agency, in their 2023 Statewide Housing Needs Assessment
- The City of Las Cruz, New Mexico, in their Affordable Housing Investment Strategy
- The City of Norfolk, Virginia, in their Strategic Housing Plan Update
- Falmouth Town, Maine, in their Housing Needs Assessment through the State of Maine Housing Data Portal
Local governments, housing advocates, and developers can use the NHPD to identify opportunities to preserve at-risk properties. By linking this data with local knowledge and funding resources, stakeholders can proactively intervene before affordability is lost.
To identify at-risk properties using the NHPD’s filtered grid:
- Filter for properties with a property status equal to active or inconclusive.
- Set the latest end date to five years from today and set the filter to “is less than.” This will show you properties with subsidies set to expire in the next five years.
- Filter by city, state, zip code, county, or congressional district to focus on the area you care about.
- (Optional) Filter the list based on your own local risk criteria or preservation priorities.
Possible Characteristics to Filter by to Inform Preservation Planning:
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The NHPD is more than a database: It’s a collection of resources to help preserve affordable housing. Whether you're an individual, researcher, advocate, PHA, policymaker, or affordable housing stakeholder, the NHPD is for you.
Ready to use the NHPD in your work? Get started by checking out our updated user guide.
Interested in sharing how you use the database in your work? Have feedback or suggestions on how to improve the database? You can fill out the NHPD annual user survey here.
This article is for general information only. HAI Group® makes no representation or warranty about the accuracy or applicability of this information for any particular use or circumstance. Your use of this information is at your own discretion and risk. HAI Group® and any author or contributor identified herein assume no responsibility for your use of this information. You should consult with your attorney or subject matter advisor before adopting any risk management strategy or policy.
HAI Group® is a marketing name used to refer to insurers, a producer, and related service providers affiliated through a common mission, management, and governance. Property-casualty insurance and related services are written or provided by Housing Authority Property Insurance, A Mutual Company; Housing Enterprise Insurance Company, Inc.; Housing Specialty Insurance Company, Inc.; Housing Investment Group, Inc.; and Housing Insurance Services (DBA Housing Insurance Agency Services in NY and MI).
