The Top 15 HUD Multifamily Lenders of 2025

HUD issued $23.6 billion in firm commitments in fiscal 2025, up 75% on the year. Here are the 15 lenders that wrote the most of it, ranked from HUD's own loan-level records.

There are few better multifamily financing options than a HUD loan. Full amortization, low fixed rates, high LTV allowances and a 35-year term tick most of the boxes a borrower is looking for, whether the plan is to buy, build or refinance.

And just to clear the air: HUD multifamily loans are by no means exclusive to affordable housing properties. They are available for just about any apartment community you can think of, and they carry some of the best multifamily financing terms in the industry.

HUD lending came back in fiscal 2025. After two of the slowest years the program has seen since the financial crisis, the department issued $23.6 billion in firm commitments across 1,087 loans, a 75% increase over fiscal 2024 and the largest single-year jump since the refinancing wave of 2021.

The list below looks quite different from last year's, and only part of that is the market moving. A good deal of it comes down to one specific methodology problem that most published rankings quietly get wrong, and I will show you exactly where it bites.

Curious about who made the list in previous years? Read our older ranking on HUD Loans.

How I built this ranking

Every figure on this page comes out of HUD's own loan-level records. The department publishes two quarterly workbooks, one covering apartments and one covering healthcare properties, each running back to fiscal 2001 with a separate row for every deal showing the lender, the program, the mortgage amount, the unit count, the state and the date. I pulled both files and totaled them by lender for the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2025.

Three decisions shape what you are looking at, and they are worth stating plainly, because they are the reason two honest people can publish two different HUD lender rankings for the same year and both be telling the truth.

Firm commitments, not closings. A firm commitment is the point at which HUD agrees to insure the loan, and it is the cleanest thing to measure because it is dated, public and attributed to a named lender. Closings happen months later and some of them never happen at all. When a lender's press release disagrees with the table below, this difference is usually the reason. Both newly issued and reissued commitments are counted, which is the same basis that produces HUD's published annual totals.

Affiliates are combined. This is the one that really matters. Several of the largest lenders file under two separate names, one for their apartment business and one for their healthcare business, and HUD's database records them as if they were unrelated companies. KeyBank's apartment arm files as KEYBANK NA while its healthcare arm files as KEYBANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, and Berkadia and Greystone both do something similar. Add the halves back together and KeyBank moves from roughly 13th place, where a raw sort of the file puts it, all the way up to fourth. Any ranking that skips this step is understating four of the ten largest HUD lenders in the country.

Both sides of the house count. HUD insures nursing homes and assisted living facilities under Section 232 alongside the apartment programs, and healthcare made up 37% of the department's book last year. Leaving it out would carve away a third of the market and misrepresent what most of these firms actually do for a living. There is an apartments-only table further down for readers who want that view instead.

One correction while I am at it. An earlier version of this article said HUD's database showed around 700 banks, housing finance agencies and other lenders active in a single fiscal year. That figure was the loan count, not the lender count. HUD issued 712 firm commitments in fiscal 2024, and someone read the rows as firms.

The real number is much smaller, and it is most of the reason a ranking like this is worth reading. Originating an FHA-insured loan means being approved by HUD as a MAP or LEAN lender first, and only 87 firms issued a single HUD firm commitment in fiscal 2025. Go back through the whole database to fiscal 2001 and there are fewer than 300 distinct names in it.

That is a different universe from commercial mortgages generally, where a borrower can shop thousands of banks, credit unions, debt funds and agency lenders. HUD is a specialist club, and the top five members of it wrote 40% of last year's volume between them.

As a check on all of it, Greystone put out a release in December 2025 reporting $2.6 billion in HUD firm commitments for fiscal 2025 across 40 apartment properties and 83 healthcare properties, or 12% of everything HUD issued that year. My numbers land on 40 apartment loans, 83 healthcare loans and $2,603.1 million, which works out to 12.1% of commitments once risk-sharing and hospital loans are excluded on the same basis Greystone used. That is a match on all four figures, and it is about as good a validation as this data allows.

The Top 15 HUD Lenders of 2025

# Lender FY2025 firm commitments Loans Units or beds Avg. loan Share of HUD
1 Greystone $2,603.1M 123 14,013 $21.2M 11.0%
2 Dwight Capital $2,023.1M 92 9,472 $22.0M 8.6%
3 Berkadia $2,006.1M 88 11,430 $22.8M 8.5%
4 KeyBank $1,589.3M 61 5,491 $26.1M 6.7%
5 Walker & Dunlop $1,152.1M 54 6,858 $21.3M 4.9%
6 VIUM Capital $1,126.3M 79 6,831 $14.3M 4.8%
7 Rockport Mortgage $846.4M 19 3,012 $44.5M 3.6%
8 NewPoint $832.4M 47 3,603 $17.7M 3.5%
9 Gershman $797.4M 30 4,859 $26.6M 3.4%
10 Lument $770.7M 50 5,834 $15.4M 3.3%
11 Merchants Capital $591.1M 26 4,130 $22.7M 2.5%
12 California HFA $571.2M 21 3,405 $27.2M 2.4%
13 Armadale Capital $561.4M 2 n/a $280.7M 2.4%
14 Mason Joseph $552.2M 12 2,770 $46.0M 2.3%
15 NYC HDC $495.2M 3 3,428 $165.1M 2.1%

Source: HUD Office of Multifamily Housing, Database of FHA Multifamily Firm Commitments and Initial Endorsements (data run April 7, 2026) and the matching FHA Healthcare database (data run April 23, 2026), both sourced from HUD's PLUS system. Figures are firm commitments issued during HUD's fiscal year, which runs October through September, and include both newly issued and reissued commitments. Affiliates that file under more than one name are combined. Unit counts are not reported for hospital loans.

15. New York City Housing Development Corporation

The one entry on this list that is not a mortgage bank at all. NYC HDC is the city's affordable housing finance agency, created by the state legislature in 1971 and now the largest municipal housing finance agency in the country, and it reached 15th place nationally on the strength of just three loans, which averaged $165.1 million apiece and gave it by far the largest average deal size in the top 15. Agency risk-sharing deals under Section 542(c) tend to be very large consolidated affordable projects rather than individual buildings, which is how three transactions add up to nearly half a billion dollars.

HDC is worth knowing about if you are building income-restricted housing in the five boroughs, but it is not a lender you shop a conventional apartment refinance to.

14. Mason Joseph Company

Mason Joseph runs one of the most concentrated books in HUD lending, closing twelve loans for $552.2 million last year at an average deal size of $46.0 million that trails only Armadale and HDC. The firm works nationally out of offices in Texas and Oklahoma, and it leans hard toward ground-up work, placing second in the country in 221(d)(4) construction lending on just 11 deals.

13. Armadale Capital

Armadale is the strangest line in the table and the best argument for reading past the dollar column. The New York firm did two loans in fiscal 2025 totaling $561.4 million, an average of $280.7 million each, and both of them were Section 241(a) improvement loans secured by Section 242 hospitals.

Armadale was founded in 2008 by Stephen Pack and it works almost exclusively on hospitals, which is a corner of the FHA world most multifamily borrowers never encounter. Section 241(a) is the supplemental loan program used to fund improvements on an existing FHA-insured property, and you can read more about how it works on this page.

Section 242 is HUD's hospital program, so if you own an apartment building, Armadale's ranking tells you nothing whatsoever about your deal. I have left the firm in the table anyway, because quietly dropping the entries that complicate a list is how rankings turn into marketing, but treat it as a hospital specialist that happens to clear a very high dollar threshold on almost no transaction volume.

12. California Housing Finance Agency

CalHFA, the state's affordable housing finance agency, did $571.2 million across 21 loans covering 3,405 units. Founded in 1975, it lends through HUD's Section 542(c) risk-sharing program, under which HUD and the agency split the insurance risk rather than HUD carrying all of it on its own balance sheet.

That structure matters for a reason that surfaces again further down this page. Risk-sharing loans are endorsed through the housing finance agency rather than through the ordinary FHA channel, so most of them never appear in HUD's endorsement records at all. Any analysis that measures state agencies against FHA endorsement data will make them look as though they almost never close anything. It is a recordkeeping artifact and nothing more.

11. Merchants Capital

Merchants finished the year at $591.1 million across 26 loans. Founded in 1990 as P/R Mortgage & Investment and now part of the publicly traded Merchants Bancorp, the Carmel, Ind., firm is a serious affordable housing shop, operating as a tax credit syndicator alongside its lending business and involved in many projects utilizing Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. Its HUD book skews toward construction, where it placed sixth nationally with $341.4 million on 11 deals.

10. Lument

Lument came in at $770.7 million across 50 loans, and it turns out to be the fastest large closer on this entire list by a comfortable margin, which I will come back to in the execution section below.

Lument's corporate history is unusually tangled, and it sets a trap for anyone reading the older rankings. ORIX built the firm in stages, taking full ownership of RED Capital Group in 2016, buying the seniors housing specialist Lancaster Pollard in 2017, combining the two into ORIX Real Estate Capital in January 2019, adding Hunt Real Estate Capital in 2020, and finally retiring the legacy brands under the single Lument name in October 2020. HUD has since gone back and relabeled the ORIX and RED Mortgage Capital rows as Lument, though it left Hunt and Lancaster Pollard under their own names, which makes multi-year comparisons on this lender genuinely awkward. Search the current file for ORIX or RED Mortgage and you will not find a single row. That is why our 2021 ranking shows ORIX sitting in seventh place while today's version of the same data shows Lument near the very top of that year.

9. Gershman

Gershman closed $797.4 million across 30 loans, a sharp increase over the prior year. Construction is a genuine strength, and the firm ranked fourth in the country in 221(d)(4) lending last year at $484.9 million.

A note on the name, because we got this wrong ourselves in an earlier edition of this article. The HUD lender is Gershman Investment Corp. of St. Louis, whose multifamily and healthcare division is led by Bruce Sandweiss. It is a separate brand from Gershman Mortgage, the residential lender based in Chesterfield, Mo. The business was founded on June 23, 1955 by Solon Gershman, a date the company confirmed when it marked its 70th anniversary in June 2025. A previous version of this page said 1957 and named the founder as Harry Gershman. Both were wrong, and the error spread to other pages on our own network before we caught it.

8. NewPoint Real Estate Capital

NewPoint reached $832.4 million across 47 loans. The firm opened for business in 2021 and has moved decisively toward healthcare since then, with $667.8 million of its fiscal 2025 volume coming through Section 232. That puts it fifth in the country on the healthcare side and well outside the top ten in apartments.

Ownership changed hands during the year covered by this ranking. Franklin BSP Realty Trust acquired NewPoint for $425 million in a deal that closed in July 2025, and the firm has had three chief executives since 2024, with Michael Comparato now in the seat. Anything you read about NewPoint written before mid-2025 describes a different company.

7. Rockport Mortgage

Rockport is the specialist's specialist, closing 19 loans for $846.4 million at an average deal size of $44.5 million. The firm has concentrated on FHA lending since it opened its doors in 1992, and it does very little of anything else.

It also does something that almost no other lender on this list does, which took me a while to work out from the data. Rockport's deals frequently arrive at the closing table under a different lender's name, with Walker & Dunlop, Lument and MassHousing all showing up as the endorsing lender on commitments that Rockport originated. If you are comparing execution statistics between firms, that pattern is worth understanding before you draw conclusions from it.

6. VIUM Capital

VIUM finished at $1,126.3 million across 79 loans, and it is a pure healthcare play, with every dollar of that volume coming through Section 232. The firm runs a bridge lending business alongside its HUD platform in a joint venture with Merchants Bank of Indiana, which is common among seniors housing lenders who use bridge debt to season a property before taking it into permanent HUD financing. VIUM was launched in 2020 by Kass Matt and Steven Kennedy, both of whom came out of Lancaster Pollard.

The deal size is worth noting. VIUM's average loan came in at $14.3 million, the smallest of any lender in the top ten, so it reaches a billion dollars by doing a great many transactions rather than a handful of large ones.

5. Walker & Dunlop

Walker & Dunlop closed $1,152.1 million across 54 loans, split between $901.2 million of apartment lending and $250.9 million on the healthcare side. Founded in 1937, the firm was among the first in the country to write single-family loans using FHA insurance and later among the first to be selected as a Fannie Mae DUS lender.

It is also the quickest of the very large lenders at moving a deal from firm commitment to initial endorsement, at a median of 77 days, and for a borrower sitting on a rate lock that is the number that actually costs or saves real money.

4. KeyBank

Here is the affiliate problem in a single entry. KeyBank did $1,589.3 million of HUD business in fiscal 2025 across 61 loans, which makes it the fourth largest HUD lender in the country. Sort the file without combining its two entities and the bank turns up around 13th on $369.9 million, which is roughly what other published rankings report.

The bulk of that volume is healthcare, and KeyBank's $1,219.4 million of Section 232 lending was second nationally behind only Greystone. The Cleveland-based bank is a major agency lender as well, which means it can quote HUD against Fannie and Freddie execution inside the same conversation.

One caution before you read the execution table below: KeyBank's median time from commitment to endorsement ran to 146 days, among the slowest of the large lenders.

3. Berkadia

Berkadia landed at $2,006.1 million across 88 loans, and it has a genuine claim to being the largest HUD apartment lender in the country. Its $1,551.1 million of apartment commitments beat every other firm including Greystone, and it led the nation in 221(d)(4) construction lending with $867.9 million on 23 deals.

This is why you will see two different firms each claiming the top spot for 2025. Berkadia is first in apartments and Greystone is first overall once healthcare is counted, so both statements are accurate and neither one is the whole picture, which is the honest answer to a question that usually gets a marketing answer instead.

The firm was formed in 2009 as a joint venture between Berkshire Hathaway and what is now Jefferies, and it remains one of the largest non-bank commercial mortgage servicers in the country. Its wider book runs to tens of billions a year across Fannie debt, Freddie loans, conduit financing and life company money.

2. Dwight Capital

Dwight closed $2,023.1 million across 92 loans, and it dominates one program in particular: its $1,000.2 million of Section 223(f) lending was the most in the country by a wide margin, roughly a quarter ahead of the second-place firm. Since 223(f) is the program most apartment owners are actually shopping, a borrower refinancing a stabilized property should know that Dwight is doing more of that exact deal than anyone else in the market.

Founded in 2014 by brothers Adam and Josh Sasouness, who still run it as co-chief executives, the New York firm splits its book between apartments and healthcare, with $731.4 million on the Section 232 side. Its HUD work spans everything from 221(d)(4) construction to 223(a)(7) refinancing loans. It is also currently running first in fiscal 2026, which would bring a very long streak to an end.

1. Greystone

Greystone took the top spot again with $2,603.1 million across 123 loans, which came to 11.0% of everything HUD committed to in fiscal 2025. The firm has now finished first on this combined basis in every single fiscal year going back to 2017, a run of nine straight years.

Founded in 1988 by Stephen Rosenberg, who is still chief executive, the New York firm runs a healthcare-weighted book. Greystone's $1,472.1 million of Section 232 lending led the country outright, while its $1,131.1 million of apartment lending placed third behind Berkadia and Dwight, and it wrote more individual loans than any other lender at 123, averaging $21.2 million apiece.

Worth flagging, though: the streak is under real pressure right now, because through the first half of fiscal 2026 Greystone is running second.

Ranked by number of deals, not dollars

Dollar volume rewards a firm for writing a handful of very large loans, which is not much help if your deal is a $6 million property in a secondary market. The more useful question for most borrowers is who does the largest number of transactions, because that is the firm whose underwriters have most likely seen a situation like yours before.

# Lender Loans closed to firm commitment Total Avg. loan
1 Greystone 123 $2,603.1M $21.2M
2 Dwight Capital 92 $2,023.1M $22.0M
3 Berkadia 88 $2,006.1M $22.8M
4 VIUM Capital 79 $1,126.3M $14.3M
5 KeyBank 61 $1,589.3M $26.1M
6 Walker & Dunlop 54 $1,152.1M $21.3M
7 Lument 50 $770.7M $15.4M
8 NewPoint 47 $832.4M $17.7M
9 Capital Funding 36 $485.1M $13.5M
10 Gershman 30 $797.4M $26.6M

Same FY2025 data, ranked by number of firm commitments rather than dollars.

The order shifts in ways that matter. VIUM jumps to fourth on deal count while sitting sixth on dollars, Capital Funding shows up at ninth on 36 loans despite not making the dollar top 15 at all, and Rockport, which placed seventh on dollars, does not appear on this table anywhere.

Who leads each HUD program

There is no such thing as a best HUD lender in the abstract. There is a best lender for a 223(f) refinance of a stabilized 200-unit property in Ohio, and it is frequently not the firm sitting at the top of the overall table. Here is how the largest programs actually broke down last year.

Section 223(f), refinance and acquisition

The workhorse of the whole program, at $7.1 billion across 309 loans in fiscal 2025, making it the single largest piece of HUD's book.

# Lender FY2025 firm commitments Loans
1 Dwight Capital $1,000.2M 39
2 Rockport Mortgage $809.3M 18
3 Greystone $745.2M 31
4 Berkadia $665.4M 26
5 Lument $464.4M 26
6 Walker & Dunlop $412.6M 16
7 JLL $313.4M 7
8 Gershman $257.2M 13

Section 221(d)(4), construction and substantial rehab

$5.2 billion across 157 loans. This is the hardest HUD execution to get right, and it is the program where a lender's experience is worth the most to you.

# Lender FY2025 firm commitments Loans
1 Berkadia $867.9M 23
2 Mason Joseph $543.0M 11
3 Walker & Dunlop $488.6M 16
4 Gershman $484.9M 13
5 Greystone $385.9M 9
6 Merchants Capital $341.4M 11
7 Dwight Capital $259.9M 5
8 Bellwether $198.5M 7

Section 232, healthcare

$8.7 billion across 494 loans, which now accounts for more than a third of everything HUD does.

# Lender FY2025 firm commitments Loans
1 Greystone $1,472.1M 83
2 KeyBank $1,219.4M 49
3 VIUM Capital $1,126.3M 79
4 Dwight Capital $731.4M 47
5 NewPoint $667.8M 36
6 Armadale Capital $561.4M 2
7 Capital Funding $485.1M 36
8 Berkadia $455.0M 38
9 Walker & Dunlop $250.9M 22
10 First American Capital $219.6M 7

Section 232 residential care and Section 242 hospital programs, from HUD's Office of Residential Care Facilities database.

And the apartments-only ranking

For readers who care only about conventional and affordable apartments, here is the same fiscal year with healthcare stripped back out.

# Lender FY2025 firm commitments Loans Units
1 Berkadia $1,551.1M 50 7,726
2 Dwight Capital $1,291.6M 45 6,303
3 Greystone $1,131.1M 40 7,541
4 Walker & Dunlop $901.2M 32 5,280
5 Rockport Mortgage $846.4M 19 3,012
6 Gershman $745.8M 27 4,448
7 Lument $617.0M 37 4,839
8 Merchants Capital $591.1M 26 4,130
9 California HFA $571.2M 21 3,405
10 Mason Joseph $552.2M 12 2,770

Apartment and other non-healthcare programs only (Section 223(f), 221(d)(4), 220, 213, 231, 241(a) and the Section 542 risk-sharing programs). Healthcare lending is ranked separately below.

Which lenders actually close

This is the part that no other ranking publishes, and I think it is the most useful table on the page.

A firm commitment is not a closed loan. HUD issues the commitment, and then the deal still has to reach initial endorsement, which is the point at which the insurance actually attaches and the money moves. A meaningful share of commitments never get there, because deals die, borrowers walk away, properties fail to appraise and construction pricing blows through the budget.

Because HUD publishes both records with the same FHA project number on each one, you can follow an individual loan from commitment through to endorsement and measure two things for every lender: what share of its commitments reach the closing table, and how long that takes. Across fiscal 2024 and 2025, 87.6% of non-risk-sharing commitments reached endorsement at a median of 106 days, with a quarter arriving inside 77 days and a tenth taking more than 208.

# Lender Firm commitments Reached endorsement Median time to endorsement
1 Regions Bank 30 97% 110 days
2 Rockport Mortgage 27 96% 84 days
3 Lument 78 94% 85 days
4 White Oak 29 93% 125 days
5 Berkadia 135 93% 97 days
6 Mason Joseph 26 92% 119 days
7 JLL 23 91% 91 days
8 CBRE 20 90% 100 days
9 VIUM Capital 113 88% 132 days
10 Merchants Capital 52 88% 115 days
11 Walker & Dunlop 95 88% 77 days
12 KeyBank 77 88% 146 days
13 Dwight Capital 136 86% 113 days
14 Greystone 206 85% 93 days
15 Capital Funding 55 84% 135 days
16 NewPoint 67 82% 111 days
17 Bellwether 27 81% 147 days
18 Colliers Mortgage 26 81% 113 days

Janover analysis of HUD firm commitment and initial endorsement records, fiscal 2024 and 2025 combined, matched on FHA project number. Section 542 risk-sharing loans are excluded because state housing finance agencies endorse them outside the FHA record, which makes their rates look near zero for reasons that have nothing to do with execution. Lenders with fewer than 20 firm commitments over the two years are excluded. HUD does not publish this measure. We calculate it here.

Read this carefully rather than as a straight league table. A low conversion rate can mean sloppy underwriting, or it can mean a lender is willing to take on harder deals that sometimes fall over. A slow median can simply reflect a construction-heavy book, since 221(d)(4) closings take longer than 223(f) refinances by their very nature.

What I would take away from it is that Lument at 93.6% and 85 days, and Walker & Dunlop at 88.4% and 77 days, are doing something right on execution at genuine scale, and both are worth a call if your timing is tight.

What HUD's pipeline says about your odds

HUD does not publish applications broken out by lender, so nobody can honestly quote you a particular firm's approval rate, and you should be skeptical of anyone who tries. What the department does publish is the pipeline in aggregate, in its monthly FHA Commercial Mortgage Portfolio report, and the shape of it is worth seeing.

For apartments in fiscal 2025, HUD logged 710 applications totaling $20.9 billion. Those produced 576 firm commitments worth $14.1 billion and 435 initial endorsements worth $9.8 billion, so roughly 81% of applications became commitments while around 61% had reached endorsement by the close of the year, with more still working their way through the pipeline.

Two things follow from that. Getting to a firm commitment is a good deal likelier than most first-time HUD borrowers expect, and the gap between commitment and endorsement is where the calendar quietly disappears, which is the real argument for weighing a lender's closing record alongside its quoted terms.

Where fiscal 2026 stands

HUD has now published data through March 31, 2026, covering the first half of the current fiscal year, and the standings have moved.

# Lender Firm commitments Loans
1 Dwight Capital $1,364.8M 55
2 Greystone $1,294.4M 46
3 Berkadia $1,172.5M 46
4 Walker & Dunlop $732.9M 21
5 Capital Funding $578.2M 27
6 Mason Joseph $501.5M 16
7 Lument $440.4M 33
8 KeyBank $410.7M 12
9 Colliers Mortgage $362.2M 15
10 PGIM $350.0M 11

HUD fiscal 2026 through March 31, 2026, the most recent quarter HUD has published. This covers six months, not a full year, and includes the 43-day appropriations lapse from October 1 to November 12, 2025, during which HUD issued no new firm commitments.

Dwight Capital leads at $1,364.8 million with Greystone second at $1,294.4 million and Berkadia close behind, and if that holds through September it ends a run at number one stretching back to fiscal 2017.

Read the total with one caveat, though. The first six months of fiscal 2026 include the appropriations lapse that ran from October 1 to November 12, 2025, a 43-day stretch during which HUD was not issuing new firm commitments at all. So $10.8 billion in a half year that lost six full weeks is a strong pace, not a weak one.

The five-year picture

Fiscal yearTotal firm commitmentsLoansApartments etc.HealthcareHealthcare share
FY2019$17.48B1,077$13.10B$4.37B25%
FY2020$26.44B1,475$21.81B$4.63B18%
FY2021$38.06B2,134$31.94B$6.12B16%
FY2022$28.49B1,446$25.05B$3.43B12%
FY2023$15.20B798$12.31B$2.89B19%
FY2024$13.51B712$9.35B$4.17B31%
FY2025$23.62B1,087$14.93B$8.69B37%
FY2026 (H1)$10.79B473$7.11B$3.68B34%

Source: HUD Office of Multifamily Housing, Database of FHA Multifamily Firm Commitments and Initial Endorsements (data run April 7, 2026) and the matching FHA Healthcare database (data run April 23, 2026), both sourced from HUD's PLUS system. Figures are firm commitments issued during HUD's fiscal year, which runs October through September, and include both newly issued and reissued commitments. Affiliates that file under more than one name are combined.

Two things stand out from the series. Fiscal 2021 was an outlier that is not coming back any time soon, driven by an interest rate environment that no longer exists. And healthcare has climbed from 16% of HUD's book in 2021 to 37% in 2025, which is the structural story sitting underneath the headline numbers.

What changed in the rules since the last edition

If you have read an older version of this article, or almost any HUD guide written before 2025, several of its key numbers are now wrong.

Mortgage insurance premiums were cut and simplified. For applications submitted or amended on or after October 1, 2025, MIP is a flat 0.25% upfront and 0.25% annually across FHA multifamily, and the old tiered categories including the Green MIP reduction were eliminated (90 FR 45789). Two caveats matter here: Section 232 healthcare and Section 242 hospitals are not covered and keep their own rates, and affordable and green deals were already sitting at 0.25%, so this is a market-rate benefit rather than a universal one.

Leverage went up and coverage came down. Mortgagee Letters 2025-03 and 2025-2, both effective January 8, 2025, moved market-rate deals to 87% LTV or LTC with a 1.15x minimum DSCR, up from 85% and 1.176x, while affordable deals moved to 90% and 1.11x. Neither letter applies to Section 232 or Section 542.

The middle-income option was rewritten. Mortgagee Letter 2026-1, issued January 22, 2026, supersedes the 2025 middle-income 221(d)(4) option and adds an eligibility gate that did not previously exist, requiring the project to participate in a state or local middle-income program or a military rental partnership. Any guide still describing the 2025 version is describing repealed policy.

Section 232 substantial rehab was narrowed. Mortgagee Letter 2025-20, issued September 16, 2025, deleted the two-major-building-components test outright and raised the hard cost threshold from 15% to 25% of as-completed value.

But Which Lender Is the Best?

That really depends on you and your needs. This is just a list of the top lenders by volume in fiscal 2025. That doesn't mean the firm at number one is a better fit for your 223(f) refinance than the firm at number 15, or better than one of the many, many, many other lenders who didn't make our list.

Volume tells you who is busy. It does not tell you who will price your deal aggressively, who has an underwriter who already knows your submarket, or who will still be returning your calls in month four. The other tables on this page give you three more ways to look at the same question, by deal count, by program and by closing record, and taken together they get you a good deal closer to an answer.

It is not as easy as just applying for a loan with an originator who works at one of the firms above, either. There's no one lender that's the best for every single borrower, after all. Thankfully, today you don't need to know off the top of your head who the best lender in town is. You just need to know how to connect with them.

That's something we can help you with at Janover. We'll shop your deal to hundreds of lenders, yes, including many of those listed above, exploring every financing program that could be the best fit for your needs. Then you can compare what's out there and pick what works for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the largest HUD multifamily lender?

It depends on what you count. Greystone was the largest HUD lender overall in fiscal 2025 at $2,603.1 million, once apartment and healthcare lending are added together. Berkadia was the largest HUD lender to apartments specifically, at $1,551.1 million. Both firms have publicly claimed the top spot and both claims are accurate on their own basis.

What is the difference between a firm commitment and a closing?

A firm commitment is HUD agreeing to insure your loan. Initial endorsement is the point at which the insurance attaches and the money actually moves. The two are separated by a median of 106 days, and roughly 12% of firm commitments never reach endorsement at all. Lender rankings are usually built on firm commitments because that is what HUD publishes with a lender name attached.

How long does a HUD multifamily loan take to close?

Measuring from firm commitment to initial endorsement across fiscal 2024 and 2025, the median was 106 days. A quarter of loans got there within 77 days and a tenth took more than 208 days. That is only the back half of the process, since it excludes the application and underwriting period that precedes the firm commitment.

Where can I find the rankings for earlier years?

Our fiscal 2021 edition covers the record year, when HUD issued $38.1 billion in firm commitments. The 2018 and 2019 rankings are in this article. For the wider multifamily market rather than HUD specifically, this article ranks the largest multifamily lenders overall.

Does the biggest HUD lender give the best rates?

Not necessarily. Volume tells you a firm is busy, not that it will price your specific deal well. A lender that does hundreds of loans a year may have less appetite for a $6 million property in a secondary market than a smaller shop that specializes in exactly that. It is worth comparing the program-level tables on this page, since the leader in 223(f) refinancing is a different firm from the leader in 221(d)(4) construction.

What is the HUD mortgage insurance premium in 2026?

For applications submitted or amended on or after October 1, 2025, FHA multifamily MIP is a flat 0.25% of the loan amount at closing and 0.25% annually, for every property type. The earlier tiered structure, including the Green MIP reduction, was eliminated under 90 FR 45789. Section 232 healthcare and Section 242 hospital loans are not covered by that change and keep their own rates. HUD loans still pair well with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, https://www.hud.loans/hud-loans-blog/lihtc-program-hud-multifamily-loans, and the Rental Assistance Demonstration program, https://www.hud.loans/hud-loans-blog/rental-assistance-demonstration.

How much can you borrow with a HUD multifamily loan?

Market-rate properties can go to 87% loan-to-value or loan-to-cost with a minimum 1.15x debt service coverage ratio. Affordable properties, and properties with 90% or more rental assistance, can reach 90% and 1.11x. Those figures come from Mortgagee Letters 2025-03 and 2025-2, both effective January 8, 2025, and they replaced the previous 85% and 1.176x limits. Program-by-program eligibility is set out on this page and in our overview of FHA and HUD Multifamily Loans, https://www.multifamily.loans/hud-multifamily-loans.

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