Tom Boccia is a partner in the Cleveland office of Novogradac & Company LLP. Mr. Boccia has more than 26 years of experience providing audit and tax services to the real estate industry, with an emphasis in commercial and residential development projects. He has extensive experience with the historic rehabilitation tax credit (HTC), new markets tax credit (NMTC), low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC), tax-exempt bond-financed transactions, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) auditing requirements and providing tax and auditing services to tax credit equity funds. His experience includes working with complex financing for community development real estate developments, including using NMTCs, HTCs, public/private partnerships and other federal, state and local tax credits and incentives. Mr. Boccia also has extensive experience in preparing financial forecasts for HTC and NMTC deals as well as syndicated real estate investments. Mr. Boccia also works extensively with community development entities, tax credit equity sponsors and real estate developers. Mr. Boccia serves as the technical editor for the firm’s Historic Rehabilitation Handbook and for the HTC content of the monthly Novogradac Journal of Tax Credits. He is a speaker at industry events, and serves as chairman of Novogradac & Company’s annual Historic Tax Credit Conference. Before joining the firm, he was a partner in a firm that provided audit and tax services to the real estate industry. His responsibilities included working with clients involved in partnerships, limited liability companies and joint ventures for residential and commercial real estate ventures and hospitality developments. Mr. Boccia received a bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in accounting from Bowling Green State University. He is licensed in Ohio as a certified public accountant.

John Tess started Heritage in 1982 when the historic preservation field was still in its infancy–the Secretary of Interior Standards was first written in 1976 and the federal HTC program started in 1978. John was working at the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office, responsible for reviewing HTC applications. He saw that developers and architects were submitting applications where they clearly did not understand the program rules, and also did not put their projects in a favorable light. John believed that, with proper guidance, applicants could secure NPS approvals quicker, achieve an overall better project and, by being efficient, be more profitable. These were the guiding principles he used to form Heritage.

With the firm based in Portland, Oregon, Mr. Tess quickly established a reputation as a tenacious advocate for his clients. By the 1990s, Heritage dominated historic preservation work in Oregon and Mr. Tess actively pursued HTC work across the country. An office was established in Washington, D.C., and Heritage secured projects in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Miami Beach and other major metropolitan areas. Many of the projects were historic boutique hotels, only then becoming popular. As with Portland clients, national clients appreciated Mr. Tess’s tenacity, creativity and advocacy.

One of the few tax credit consultants whose roots go back to the beginning, Mr. Tess is well regarded as a voice for the private developer in the continuing public debate on how to create better HTC program. It was for this perspective that he was asked by Presidential First Lady, Laura Bush, to participate in Preserve America, a national summit to review historic preservation in the United States, and to offer strategic direction moving forward in the 21st century. In addition to frequently speaking at conferences for both public and private sectors, he also has a regular column in Novogradac’s Journal of Tax Credits.

Mr. Tess is a board member of Preservation Action, the National Housing and Rehabilitation Association and an active participant in the Historic Tax Credit Coalition, sitting on their Historic Preservation Committee. Over the years, he has sat on many Governor-appointed boards, appointed by Gov. Theodore Kulongoski to Oregon’s Task Force on Historic Property, and was elected its chairman. He currently serves as a governor-appointed board member of the Oregon Cultural Trust.

Bill MacRostie is based in the MHA Washington, D.C., office where he advises clients on historic rehabilitation tax credit design and regulatory issues. From 2000 to 2003, Mr. MacRostie was the Washington, D.C., principal of a national historic consulting firm. From 1997 to 2000, he was national director of historic property services for Ernst & Young LLP where he advised developers, institutional investors, and equity syndicators on historic certification matters. While at E&Y, Mr. MacRostie originated historic credit investments for the firm’s corporate and institutional clients. Mr. MacRostie has also worked for Langelier Historic Properties Inc., an equity syndication firm specializing in rehabilitation development, and served as an architectural historian on the staff of the Technical Preservation Services Division of the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., where he performed historic tax credit project review. 

In private practice for more than 30 years, Mr. MacRostie has advised clients nationwide on projects ranging in size and type from the multi-phased $175 million mixed-use Stroh’s Riverplace project in Detroit, Mich., to a $1.5 million hotel rehabilitation in Santa Rosa, Calif. He has represented clients in more than two dozen tax certification administrative appeals in Washington, D.C. For the 14 years that NPS certification project review was conducted in regional offices, Mr. MacRostie worked extensively in every regional office and most major states around the country. 

Mr. MacRostie has lectured widely on the subjects of historic rehabilitation and real estate development. His speaking credits include the nationwide, 21-city “Rehab for Profit” seminar series on historic rehabilitation development co-sponsored by the National Association of Realtors and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, as well as testimony before the Committee on Ways and Means of the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. MacRostie’s recent publications include articles in Urban Land Magazine, Multi-Housing News, Affordable Housing Finance Magazine, and the Section 42 Report. 

Mr. MacRostie serves on the board of directors of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association and is a past treasurer of the board of directors of Preservation Action, the national lobby for preservation and rehabilitation. 

Mr. MacRostie holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., and a master’s degree in historic preservation studies from Boston University.

Kasper Tax Credit Finance, an affiliate of Kasper Mortgage Capital, LLC (KMC) is a national syndicator of federal and state historic rehabilitation tax credits (HTC). Kasper funds many specially targeted state credits such as the South Carolina textile, North Carolina mill rehabilitation and Brownfield tax credits. Kasper has provided $250 million in tax credit equity for developments in a dozen states. KMC is a direct investor. It manages the entire tax credit process from the acquisition of the property to the tax credit funding. It represents a number of national insurance companies that are the primary investors for the various state tax credit programs. It also advises our clients on a variety of issues including the most efficient legal structure for development, analysis of project costs to maximize tax credit proceeds, assistance with construction or permanent financing, preparation of all partnership documentation, submission of Part 1, 2 and 3 applications with the applicable State Historic Preservation Office and the National Park Service and selecting and working with an accounting firm to complete the cost certification required by the tax credit investor. Kasper Mortgage Capital’s presence in the tax credit business is deep and dates back more than 20 years. KMC pioneered the development of permanent mortgage financing for the low income housing tax credit (LIHTC) industry in the early 1990s. KMC completed more than $500 million of tax credit mortgage financings for LIHTC developments nationally in that decade. KMC principals were major innovators in applying real estate financing techniques to real estate finance during the 1980s at Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley and completed in excess of $15 billion of mortgage financings.