Commercial real estate finance firm Walker & Dunlop's push to expand both its portfolio of assets under management and its exposure to affordable housing has scored a major victory.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Walker & Dunlop has agreed to acquire Alliant Capital and its affiliates in a transaction valuing the latter at $696M, the two companies announced on Monday. Upon the transaction's closing, which is anticipated to occur in the fourth quarter, Walker & Dunlop will assume Alliant's $14B of assets under management, increasing the size of its own portfolio nearly eightfold.

Walker & Dunlop has agreed to pay $351M in cash and $90M worth of common stock to acquire Alliant, as well as structuring $100M as participating interest in future cash flows over the next four years, according to the announcement. As part of the transaction, Walker & Dunlop has also agreed to assume the $155M balance of Alliant's securitized debt facility, which carries interest of 4.45%.

Alliant Capital's main business line is buying Low-Income Housing Tax Credits to use as financing vehicles for affordable housing development, and as such, it is the sixth-largest syndicator of LIHTC deals in the U.S., the press release announcing the acquisition says. Its affiliate, Alliant Strategic Investments, focuses on developing its own affordable and workforce housing projects. Indirectly or directly, Alliant and its affiliates have participated in the development of 100,000 affordable housing units.

As of late August, Walker & Dunlop had $2B of assets under management, though the Drive to '25 expansion initiative it announced in December set a goal of cracking $10B in the next five years. When its acquisition of Alliant is complete, it will have blown past that goal in just about one year.

Walker & Dunlop also expects the acquisition of Alliant to add $90M to $100M of additional revenue in 2022, as well as diluted earnings per share of 45 cents to 60 cents.