The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is the nation's largest municipal housing preservation and development agency. Its mission is to promote quality housing and diverse, thriving neighborhoods for New Yorkers through loan and development programs for new affordable housing, preservation of the affordability of the existing housing stock, enforcement of housing quality standards, and educational programs for tenants and building owners. Within HPD's Office of Legal Affairs (OLA's), the Contracts and Real Estate Division (CRED) handles, among other things, all of HPD's legal work related to real estate development, land-use planning, and asset management. The division's primary responsibility is to provide legal services to the Agency's affordable housing development programs, including by advising on real estate financings, sales and leases of City-owned property, and affordable housing regulatory agreements, and by closing the Agency's real estate transactions. The division is also responsible for advising on planning, pre-development, and asset management matters and affordable housing development policy and program design and implementation.