Maria Barry and Brad Dubeck

The Bank of America community development banking team ramped up its affordable housing financing output in 2024 with $7.8 billion in debt and equity volume, a nearly 10 percent jump from the year prior.

“We don’t have a lot of large fluctuations or big changes and we really try to be consistent and stable for our clients and for communities,” Maria Barry said. “Our numbers are up a bit, and I would attribute that to just the incredible need for affordable housing around the country.”

While elevated interest rates and increased costs have weighed on the entire commercial real estate finance industry, Barry stressed that affordable housing has weathered the storm better than many other sectors thanks to having other subsidies to tap into when balancing the capital stacks. Barry noted that the size of affordable housing financing deals has also been increasing over the last couple of years, which she attributed to greater efficiency with fixed costs spread among more units.

One of the larger deals Barry’s team closed last year involved $181.1 million of construction financing and $330.7 million of total investment to build the Transbay Block development featuring two adjacent projects totaling 334 affordable housing units in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood. Barry said the project stands out, with a number of on-site health-related services from Mercy Hospital in partnership Episcopal Community Services and the Chinatown Community Development Center. Such features are playing a larger role in its projects overall. 

“We have seen a really strong connection with health and housing and partnerships with agencies locally on the ground really giving residents the tools to help them,” Barry said. “It is something we’ve been watching and are seeing grow every year.”

In the CMBS market, Bank of America was no slouch, either, executing $12.1 billion of originations in 2024, nearly three times higher than its 2023 volume, according to Green Street data. 

Bank of America teamed with Wells Fargo to co-originate Tishman Speyer’s $3.5 billion CMBS refinance of its Rockefeller Center office complex in October 2024, which marked the largest-ever SASB office deal in history.