Working with affordable and rent-regulated properties

Affordable properties

During the floor plan mapping step, you can mark individual floor plans or units as "Affordable" and enter AMI restriction percentages. This information flows into your model and helps differentiate market-rate units from restricted units in your analysis.

For properties that are 100% affordable, mark all floor plans as affordable. For mixed-income properties, mark only the restricted units — this allows your model to apply different rent growth assumptions to market-rate vs. restricted units.

In the Archer Standard Model, affordable units get a separate rent growth rate input so you can model regulated increases separately from market increases.

Rent-regulated properties (NYC / New York rent stabilization, etc.)

Rent-regulated properties often have unique rent roll structures: legal rent (maximum allowable), preferential rent (actual charged rent), MCI credits, and other regulated charges. Here's how to handle them:

Legal rent vs. actual rent: During charge code mapping, you'll see multiple rent-related charges. Map the tenant's actual paid rent to "Lease Rent." Legal rent (maximum allowable) can be mapped to "Market Rent" if you want it as a reference point, or you can leave it unmapped if it's not useful for your analysis.

Preferential credits / MCI credits: These are adjustments between legal and actual rent. Map them appropriately in the charge code step — typically as a concession or rental assistance category, depending on how your model treats them.

Room counts vs. bedroom counts: Some NYC rent rolls list units by room count (3-room, 4-room) rather than bedroom count. Archer reads whatever is in the unit type column. If rooms are listed, you may need to manually adjust bed counts during the floor plan mapping step. As a general rule: rooms = bedrooms + 2 (kitchen + living room), though studios and non-standard layouts vary.

Unit-level legal rents: If every unit has a unique legal rent (common in regulated buildings), Archer creates a weighted average for floor plan-level analysis. For unit-level precision, you can click the pencil icon on each floor plan to expand individual units and work at the unit level.

Properties with retail or commercial components

Archer is currently multifamily-focused and does not parse retail or commercial operating statements. For mixed-use properties with a retail component, parse the multifamily portion through Archer and handle the retail component separately in your model, as you would today.