Housing Agencies 'Merge’

The New York State Housing Finance Agency and the State of New York Mortgage Agency have merged — for the purpose of statistics on volume published by Thomson Reuters — but remain separate issuers.

Thomson Reuters, which is The Bond Buyer’s source of data for ranking issuers, no longer lists the two issuers separately, instead identifying them as “NYS Housing-Mortgage Agcy.” The financial information provider changed its historical database to reflect the new designation, meaning it’s retroactive to include past issuance.

Lisett Rodriguez of Thomson Reuters wrote in an e-mail that “we took into consideration the reasoning from” HFA executive vice president for housing programs Marian Zucker, as the two agencies were originally created as separate legal entities by the Legislature in 1960 and 1970 but then “co-located” in 1993.

Rodriquez explained that the issuers’ staffs are integrated and share board members: “The two agencies operate as one and feel they should be reflected as a single bond issuer.”

Last year, the country’s biggest housing bond issuer was the New York City Housing Development Corp., with $1.21 billion of bonds. The HFA, which finances multifamily housing, came in a close second with $1.18 billion. If SONYMA — which finances single-family homes and sold $374.5 million of bonds last year — was added, the combined entities would have been the top issuer.

“By statute we’re separate agencies but it’s the same people issuing the debt, the same folks who are overseeing it, the same folks who are dealing with the underwriters and the advisers, and the volume cap comes from the same place,” said HFA spokesman Philip Lentz. “Now we can claim we’re number one.”

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