MassHousing closes $14M Westcott permanent loan

MassHousing has closed the final piece of The Westcott's $69.1 million capital stack: a $14 million permanent loan on WinnCompanies' 114-unit affordable development in Swampscott, Massachusetts, which opened in July 2025 on a former industrial site the town approved for redevelopment. The agency's participation runs wider than that note, with $12.2 million in tax-credit bridge financing and $2.2 million in workforce housing financing taking its total to $28.4 million.

Bank of America carried the construction risk with a $38.7 million facility, while federal and state low-income housing tax credits raised through the 4% and 9% programs supplied $37.5 million. The remaining public support came from ARPA funds through the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, direct EOHLC financing, HOME dollars, and the Swampscott Affordable Housing Trust.

At roughly $123,000 per unit, the $14 million note equals about one-fifth of the $606,000 per-door cost, while the construction loan runs nearly three times larger. In an ordinary refinancing the permanent mortgage would be the large exit that pays off the construction lender, but $14 million cannot clear a $38.7 million balance, so the tax-credit allocations and subsidy money already in the stack were always the real exit and the permanent loan added only the final slice.

That layering is typical of the agency-financed world, where the last piece of capital often carries the least risk. MassHousing is not only the permanent lender but also supplied the bridge and workforce financing, so the loan's terms are set by the same institution that structured the subsidies. The underwriting is less about the building's cash flow than about the continuity of the agency's own affordable-housing programs, and the structure echoes the senior-housing financing this publication covered last week, where a six-agency stack of public capital did the heavy lifting. With government subsidy at the bottom of the stack, a $14 million top line can be small, patient, and priced to something other than the market's rent roll; the agency's own bridge and workforce lines are what make that possible.