Top 10 HUD Lenders of 2021

We take a closer look at the institutions with the highest origination volumes under HUD’s MAP program for the department’s 2021 fiscal year.

HUD issued $38.1 billion in firm commitments across 2,134 loans in fiscal 2021. Nothing before or since comes close. Four years later, fiscal 2025 came in at $23.6 billion, and that was celebrated as a strong recovery year.

We originally published this ranking in early 2022. It has been rebuilt since, from HUD's current loan-level records rather than the figures available at the time, and a few things moved. This page explains what changed and why, because the reasons turn out to be more interesting than the table.

The Top 10 HUD Lenders of 2021

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). Firm commitments issued during fiscal 2021, which ran October 2020 through September 2021, covering apartment and healthcare programs together. Total for the year: $38.06 billion across 2,134 loans. Affiliates filing under more than one name are combined. HUD restates this database every quarter as loans are amended, so these figures differ slightly from the ones published at the time. *Lument did not exist under that name in 2021. HUD has retroactively relabeled the historical rows filed by ORIX Real Estate Capital and RED Mortgage Capital as Lument, the firm they were folded into, and neither of those names now returns a single row anywhere in the database. The relabeling was selective: Hunt Mortgage Capital and Lancaster Pollard Mortgage Co., which were also absorbed into Lument, still appear under their own names, so the Lument figure here covers the ORIX and RED books only.

Why this table differs from the one we first published

Three separate things move a HUD ranking after the fact, and all three hit this particular year.

HUD restates the database every quarter. Firm commitments get amended, loan amounts change, and deals get withdrawn, so HUD republishes the whole file each quarter with the current figures. Our original table showed Greystone at $3.32 billion. The same lender, in the same fiscal year, now reads differently in HUD's own file. Neither number was wrong when it was published.

ORIX became Lument, retroactively. Our original list had ORIX Real Estate Capital in seventh place. Search HUD's current database for ORIX and you get nothing at all, because the department went back and relabeled those rows as Lument, the firm ORIX's lending business was eventually folded into. ORIX took full ownership of RED Capital Group in 2016, bought the seniors housing specialist Lancaster Pollard in 2017, merged them into ORIX Real Estate Capital in January 2019, added Hunt Real Estate Capital in 2020, and retired the legacy brands under the Lument name in October 2020.

The relabeling is selective, which is easy to trip over. ORIX and RED Mortgage Capital have been erased from the file entirely, but Hunt Mortgage Capital and Lancaster Pollard Mortgage Co. still sit there under their own names even though both ended up inside the same company. So the Lument line below covers the ORIX and RED books, and Lancaster Pollard's volume is counted separately.

So the seventh-place entry on our original list and the seventh-place entry today are the same book of business under two different names. If you are comparing HUD data across years, this is the single easiest way to get badly confused.

Affiliates are now combined. Several large lenders file under two names, one for apartments and one for healthcare, and HUD records them separately. We now add those halves back together, which is why KeyBank appears here and did not appear on the original list.

1. Greystone

Greystone finished first with $4.44 billion across 243 loans, which was 11.7% of everything HUD committed to that year. That is the largest single-year total any HUD lender has recorded in the 25 years HUD's database covers, and it is unlikely to be beaten soon.

Founded in 1988 by Stephen Rosenberg, who still runs the firm, the New York lender has now finished first in every fiscal year from 2017 through 2025.

2. Dwight Capital

Dwight did $3.43 billion across 168 loans. The firm had bought Love Funding, the Washington HUD lender, in August 2020, and fiscal 2021 was the first full year with that book folded in. Adam and Josh Sasouness founded Dwight in 2014 and still run it as co-chief executives.

3. Berkadia

Berkadia placed third at $2.79 billion across 140 loans. The firm was formed in 2009 out of the Capmark bankruptcy 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.

4. Walker & Dunlop

Walker & Dunlop reached $2.65 billion across 136 loans. Founded in 1937 and led by Willy Walker since 2007, it was among the first firms in the country to write single-family loans using FHA insurance. Its overall loan servicing portfolio ran to roughly $107 billion at the end of 2020.

5. Rockport Mortgage

Rockport did $2.14 billion across 75 loans, which for a firm of its size is remarkable. The Gloucester, Mass., lender has focused on FHA since 1992 and does almost nothing else, with affordable housing preservation as its signature work.

Rockport is still doing this. It placed seventh nationally in fiscal 2025 on 19 loans, at the largest average deal size of any lender in that year's top 15.

6. Merchants Capital

Merchants closed $1.90 billion across 133 loans. Founded in 1990 as P/R Mortgage & Investment and now part of the publicly traded Merchants Bancorp, the Carmel, Ind., firm pairs its lending with an in-house tax credit equity platform, which it launched that same year. Beyond FHA it works across Freddie and Fannie products as well as USDA-backed multifamily loans.

7. Lument

Lument recorded $1.56 billion across 136 loans. This is the entry that appeared as ORIX Real Estate Capital on our original list, for the reasons described above.

Worth noting that the firm's deal count was high relative to its dollar volume, at 136 loans, which is a pattern that has held. Lument remains one of the busiest FHA lenders in the country by transaction count rather than by size.

8. Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo did $1.46 billion across just 33 loans, an average of more than $44 million per deal, which was the largest average in the top ten that year.

It is also the only firm on this list that has since fallen out of the top tier. Wells Fargo's HUD volume dropped to $136.8 million in fiscal 2025 across four loans, down roughly 91% from its 2021 figure. The bank has not left HUD lending, but it is no longer a significant player in it.

9. KeyBank

KeyBank reached $1.10 billion across 29 loans. The Cleveland bank did not appear on our original 2021 list because its apartment and healthcare arms file under separate names in HUD's database and we were not combining them at the time.

10. Gershman

Gershman Investment Corp. rounded out the top ten at $1.06 billion across 65 loans. The St. Louis firm was founded on June 23, 1955 by Solon Gershman, a date the company confirmed when it marked 70 years in business in June 2025.

An earlier version of this article gave the founding year as 1955 while a companion article on our network said 1957 and named the founder as Harry Gershman. The 1955 date is correct and the 1957 version has been removed.

The deals that defined the year

Two transactions give a sense of the scale HUD was writing at. JLL closed a $104.7 million Section 220 loan for The Couture, a 44-story tower on the Milwaukee lakefront, as reported by BizTimes Milwaukee. Rockport refinanced Summit Plaza, a 483-unit Section 8 property in Jersey City, N.J., for $120.4 million.

Both are the kind of large, complex, long-dated deals that HUD does better than anyone, and both would be materially more expensive to finance today.

Why 2021 was the peak

Interest rates. That is most of the answer.

HUD-insured loans priced off long Treasury yields that spent 2020 and 2021 near historic lows, and the 35-year fully amortizing structure meant a borrower could lock fixed interest rates for the life of the asset. For HUD loans endorsed between January and September 2022, rates averaged 3.35% according to the department's own data. Refinancing a stabilized property into an FHA 223(f) refinancing at those levels was close to a free option, and owners took it in volume.

Here is what happened afterward.

Combined apartment and healthcare firm commitments by HUD fiscal year. Fiscal 2021 remains the record.

Volume fell by more than half between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2024 as rates rose. Fiscal 2025 was the first real recovery, at $23.6 billion, and fiscal 2026 is running ahead of that pace through the first half despite losing six weeks to an appropriations lapse in October and November 2025.

One program went to zero

A detail from this period that is worth knowing if you own a HUD-financed property. Section 223(a)(7) is HUD's streamline refinance, available only on loans the department already insures, and in fiscal 2021 it was enormous: 431 apartment-side commitments worth $7.2 billion, which was nearly a fifth of everything HUD did that year.

Then it stopped. The count fell to 56 loans in fiscal 2022, then 2 in fiscal 2023, then zero in both fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025. Through the first half of fiscal 2026 there has been exactly one, a $17.0 million co-op refinance.

The program has not gone anywhere. The math has. A streamline refinance only helps if the new rate beats the old one, and the loans written in 2020 and 2021 carry coupons that today's market cannot improve on, so there is nothing to refinance into. If you closed a HUD loan in those years, you are holding a below-market fixed-rate asset with decades left to run, and the streamline option you might have expected to use is simply not economically useful right now.

What the rules look like now

Almost every number in the original version of this article has since been superseded. If you are reading this page for current terms rather than for history, these are the changes that matter.

Mortgage insurance premiums were cut to a flat 0.25% upfront and 0.25% annually for applications submitted or amended on or after October 1, 2025, and the old tiered categories including the Green MIP reduction were eliminated (90 FR 45789). Section 232 healthcare and Section 242 hospitals are not covered by that change.

Leverage went up and coverage came down under Mortgagee Letters 2025-03 and 2025-2, both effective January 8, 2025. Market-rate deals now run to 87% LTV or LTC with a 1.15x minimum DSCR, and affordable deals to 90% and 1.11x. In 2021 those figures were 85% and 1.176x. For subsidized construction the 221(d)(4) program still allows for a loan-to-cost ratio of up to 90%.

The affordable tiers turn on rent restrictions rather than on the borrower. A property generally qualifies by serving households at a set share of area median income, or by being covered by Low-Income Housing Tax Credits restrictions.

Where these lenders stand today

Nine of the ten firms on this list still ranked in HUD's top 15 in fiscal 2025, which is a striking amount of continuity for a five-year gap in this business. Greystone, Dwight, Berkadia, Walker & Dunlop, Rockport, Merchants, Lument, KeyBank and Gershman all held their place. Wells Fargo is the one that did not.

For the current standings, including rankings by deal size, by HUD program and by which lenders actually get their commitments to the closing table, see our ranking of the top HUD lenders in 2025. The same lenders measured on HUD's fiscal year rather than the calendar year are in our sister site's top 15 HUD multifamily lenders, which is why the two pages name different leaders.

Related reading

• 5 Myths about HUD-Insured Multifamily Loans
• Top 5 Advantages of HUD Construction Financing
• HUD 223(f) loan
• HUD 232 Insurance Requirements

Related Questions

Who were the top HUD lenders in 2021?

Greystone led fiscal 2021 with $4.44 billion in firm commitments, followed by Dwight Capital at $3.43 billion, Berkadia at $2.79 billion, Walker and Dunlop at $2.65 billion and Rockport Mortgage at $2.14 billion. Those five firms accounted for more than 40% of all HUD lending that year.

Why was 2021 such a big year for HUD lending?

Interest rates. HUD-insured loans price off long Treasury yields, which sat near historic lows through 2020 and 2021, and the 35-year fully amortizing fixed-rate structure let borrowers lock those rates for the life of the asset. Refinancing into a HUD loan at those levels was close to a free option and owners took it in volume.

Is HUD lending back to 2021 levels?

No, and it is not close. Fiscal 2021 saw $38.1 billion in firm commitments. Volume fell to $13.5 billion by fiscal 2024 before recovering to $23.6 billion in fiscal 2025. Fiscal 2026 is running ahead of that pace through the first half despite a 43-day appropriations lapse in October and November 2025.

What happened to ORIX Real Estate Capital?

It became Lument. ORIX took full ownership of RED Capital Group in 2016, acquired Lancaster Pollard in 2017, combined them into ORIX Real Estate Capital in January 2019, added Hunt Real Estate Capital in 2020, and retired the legacy brands under the Lument name in October 2020. HUD has retroactively relabeled its historical ORIX and RED rows as Lument.