ABout Us

At BridgeWater, we are more than just real estate brokers. We are experts in the niche fields of affordable housing and development in the Mid Atlantic.  We are passionate about your tenants, your reputation and your bottom line.  We are proud of our experience, our research and our business ethics.  

The affordable housing sector is highly technical, with difficult-to-navigate capital structures. We are perpetual students of the ever-changing affordable housing market.  We aim to learn more every day about all of the different facets of affordable housing brokerage and advisory, including transactions of both real estate and partnership interests, financing, management, operations, ground-up and acquisition & rehab development, regulations, tax implications, individual state requirements, the importance of REAC scores and much more. 

We continue to stay abreast about the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) arena financing programs available through HUD, Section 8, Rural Housing programs such as USDA 538 Loans, and Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD).  We also add to our understanding of various federal and state programs such as HUD’s HOME funds, Maryland’s Partnership Program, Rental Housing Works, and other programs that can be layered subsidies.  

In addition, since we are involved in many ground up developments, we keep our finger on the pulse of the development pipelines in the greater DC area as well as the greater Baltimore, MD submarkets.

We understand Opportunity Zones, Qualified Census Tracts (QCTs), Difficult to Develop Areas (DDAs), Areas of Opportunity and how they can enhance a development project. 

By bringing together our expertise and proven track record to focus on your specific needs, we can help you successfully navigate every step of the process, whether you’re looking to acquire, dispose of, renovate, refinance or develop affordable housing.  

Sometimes disposition is not the best solution right now, so we help you navigate the right strategy, and honestly give you our best advice for your specific needs.  As dedicated problem solvers, we excel at rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty with difficult properties using our comprehensive research and network to find value for you.  Commercial real estate is a long term business, so please think of BridgeWater as your consultants who, instead of earning an hourly rate, are compensated on the eventual sale when the time is actually right.  

Giving Back

At BridgeWater, we are passionate about bridging the gap between affordable housing communities and the natural world. That’s why we are partnering with The Reed Center for Ecosystem Reintegration to reconnect underserved communities with nature, providing life-changing education, experience, and a strong sense of purpose and community.  This also benefits the developers by helping them win RFPs by utilizing the most ecologically minded practices to create a truly unique community. 

At The Reed Center for Ecosystem Reintegration, we design thriving ecosystems to meet human needs.  As partners with The Reed Center, we believe bringing the same wisdom and technology to affordable housing communities will create their own thriving human ecosystem.  There are a number of ways we can improve the lives of your tenants.  As a result of years of working with many local organizations, we add value by helping you develop a customized ecological and/or socially desirable solution to create as desirable a community as possible. Here are just some of the ways that we can help:

To the community and their children, we offer:

Amenities
  • Edible Landscaping (Food Forest): We want to design and plant perennial edible landscaping which will nourish the community with nuts, fruit, berries and more for generations to come, with little effort on the part of the community.  
  • Raised Bed Gardens: We want to install raised bed gardens for annual crops.
  • Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): We want to teach them how to grow and sell the food harvested from their natural edible landscaping as well as the food they grow in their gardens.
Educational Programming
  • Natural world: Educate the communities and the children about the natural world, to rethink and reuse space to restore any land around them to turn it into a healthy space to grow food and build community.
  • Gardening: Educate how to grow and harvest the food grown in these new spaces.
  • Food: We provide nutrition and cooking classes.
  • Composting & grey water management
  • Mindfulness, yoga, parenting workshops, and much more.
Experience
  • Retreats:  We will provide access to nature using our local networks of regenerative farms and permaculture sites and by scheduling and bussing our communities to these locations.  There we will provide camping, yoga, meditation, educational programming, and life changing experiences.  See the following 30 minutes documentary for an example of a retreat we hosted recently.  

For Developers:

Promising to provide the above amenities, educational programming and experiences to the community might be the final step that awards you the next big RFP over your competition.  In addition, our services include developing:
  • Geothermal systems
  • Grey water management systems
  • Composting systems
  • Permeable pavements
  • Biodiverse wildlife plantings that are beautiful, edible and medicinal