Multifamily Loans

Multifamily Loan Rates updated October 25, 2026

• Streamlined underwriting for institutional multifamily
• Cash-out refinances are acceptable
• Interest-only and non-recourse options
• Minimum 1.25x debt-service-coverage ratio

Rates last updated October 25, 2026. Rates and maximum LTV shown represent our best-case pricing scenarios. Actual rates, LTV, and loan terms are subject to underwriting approval and may vary.

Visit our Apartment Building Loan Page to See Rates Under $6 Million ›

Compare Your Multifamily Loan Options

Typical starting points for multifamily loans over $6 million. Rates move daily and every multifamily lender prices a little differently, so treat these as a starting range rather than a quote:

Bank and life company financing are also available for stabilized assets. Most multifamily lenders look for a minimum 1.25x debt-service-coverage ratio.

Rates last updated October 25, 2026. Rates and maximum LTV shown represent our best-case pricing scenarios. Actual rates, LTV, and loan terms are subject to underwriting approval and may vary.

Multifamily Lenders and Loan Programs We Use

As a broker we compare every multifamily lender and program, then match your property to the best execution:

Before You Apply: What a Multifamily Loan Actually Requires

Written & reviewed by Stephen A. Sobin, President of Select Commercial Funding LLC
Updated October 25, 2026 · 30+ years in commercial real estate finance

We would rather be straight with you at the top of this page than three calls in. We arrange multifamily financing nationwide and we are glad to look at a real deal. But there are requests we cannot do anything with, and saying so early respects your time as much as ours.

• A loan of at least $1,500,000, with five or more residential units. That floor is firm.
• An identified property with real numbers. This is the one that matters most at this size. A multifamily loan is sized on a specific building’s income, so there is no useful pre-approval without a rent roll and a trailing twelve-month operating statement. We can tell you how the market is pricing; we cannot tell you your proceeds without your property.
• Equity that exists today. Expect 25% to 35% depending on program and leverage, documented and liquid. Agency lenders also commonly want borrower net worth at or above the loan amount and nine to twelve months of debt service in post-closing liquidity.
• Ownership or management experience at this scale, or a named third-party manager who has it.

If you are shopping a rate with no property under contract, financing a ground-up development with no equity in place, or looking for a loan under the minimum, we are not the right call yet. You are welcome to use everything on this page in the meantime. Our days go to borrowers in a position to transact now, and we would rather point you somewhere useful than take a meeting that cannot become a loan.

Running the Process: Four Things That Decide Your Terms

At this loan size the difference between a good execution and an average one is rarely the headline rate. It is these four.

What kills a large deal in week six

In our experience the late failures cluster into four causes, and all four are preventable at week one.

• A tax line nobody restated. The seller’s trailing taxes are not your taxes in most states. Reassessment on sale, a scheduled revaluation, or an abatement that does not survive transfer will all change the expense line after the loan is sized.
• An insurance quote that was twelve months old. In coastal and convective-storm markets a stale quote is not a quote. Get a current one before the file is sized, not after.
• An abatement or payment-in-lieu arrangement that does not transfer. Several states make continuation permissive and conditional on a municipal consent that has to be obtained. If your proceeds assume the benefit continues, confirm that in diligence rather than at closing.
• Collateral that turns out to be a leasehold. Bond-lease and development authority structures put fee title with the authority. That makes the loan a leasehold mortgage, which needs consent, an estoppel and a lease term that extends well beyond maturity.

Get a Written Quote in 48 Hours
No cost, no obligation, no upfront fees. Multifamily loans from $1,500,000.

How to Choose a Multifamily Lender

Most owners start by asking who has the lowest rate. That is the wrong first question, and asking it first is how people end up ninety days into a process with a lender that was never going to close their deal. The right first question is which category of multifamily lender your property actually belongs to, because rate follows from that rather than the other way round.

The five kinds of multifamily lender, and what each one is really buying

Agency lenders place loans with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They want stabilized occupancy, clean operating history and a property that fits a defined box. In exchange you get the longest fixed terms, the most aggressive amortization, and non-recourse. If your property fits the box, this is usually the cheapest capital available to you, and nothing else is close.

FHA and HUD lenders offer the highest leverage and the longest terms of anyone, on fully amortizing thirty-five and forty-year debt. The trade is time and paperwork. If you can wait and your property qualifies, the terms are unmatched. If you need to close in forty-five days, this is not your program.

Banks and credit unions hold the loan on their own balance sheet, which makes them the most flexible on property condition, borrower story and timing, and the most likely to say yes on something unusual. The trade is shorter terms, recourse in most cases, and a relationship expectation. For a smaller property, a transitional one, or a market where national lenders have no data, a bank is frequently the only sensible answer.

Life companies lend their own long-term money and are the most selective of the five. They want the best properties in the best locations with the lowest leverage, and they price accordingly. If you own an A-quality asset and want low leverage and a long fixed term, a life company will often beat the agencies.

CMBS lenders pool loans and sell them as bonds. They are the most tolerant of a complicated story and the least tolerant of anything changing after closing, because the loan gets locked into a securitization with a servicer rather than a relationship. Prepayment is expensive and defeasance is a real cost. CMBS earns its place when the property or the borrower does not fit an agency box and the size justifies the structure.

The three questions that actually decide it

How long do you intend to hold? This matters more than the rate. A ten-year fixed agency loan on a property you sell in year four can carry a prepayment cost that dwarfs whatever you saved on the coupon. A five-year bank loan on a property you hold twenty years means five more financings, five more sets of costs, and five more chances to hit a bad market.

What is the property’s weakest number? Every property has one, and each type of multifamily lender reacts to it differently. Occupancy that dipped last year, an expense ratio that runs high, deferred maintenance in the property condition report, a tenant base concentrated in one employer, a market with thin comparable data. Naming your weakest number first, out loud, is the single fastest way to find out which lenders are genuinely in play. Hiding it costs you sixty days and finds out anyway.

Do you need certainty or do you need the best terms? They are not the same purchase. Certainty of execution has a price and it is usually worth paying on an acquisition with a hard closing date. The best available terms are worth chasing on a refinance where you control the clock.

Why a broker, honestly

A direct multifamily lender can only offer you what it has. That is not a criticism, it is the business model, and a good direct lender will tell you when their product does not fit. But it means the answer you get is bounded by the one balance sheet you happened to call. Running the same property past agency, bank, life company, CMBS and bridge sources at the same time is what tells you what the market will actually pay for your deal, and the spread between the best and worst quote on the same property is routinely wider than borrowers expect. That comparison is what we do. Send the rent roll and the trailing twelve months and we will tell you which multifamily lenders are genuinely competitive on your property and which are wasting your time.

How Multifamily Lenders Underwrite a Loan

Institutional multifamily underwriting turns on a handful of ratios. Knowing them tells you your likely proceeds before you apply.

• DSCR. Agency and most bank lenders look for a minimum 1.25x debt-service-coverage ratio on stabilized multifamily (Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac terms, 2026).
• LTV. Up to 80% on conventional agency purchases, 75% on many refinances and CMBS, and up to 87% on FHA/HUD for qualifying properties.
• Debt yield. Lenders also test NOI against loan amount as a downside check; healthy multifamily requests clear the high-single-digit thresholds lenders use.
• Amortization & term. Agency loans amortize over up to 30 years (up to 35 on FHA/HUD), with fixed terms of 5 to 30 years and interest-only options on lower-leverage requests.
• Recourse. Most agency and CMBS multifamily loans are non-recourse with standard “bad-boy” carve-outs.

We size every request against these metrics up front, then match it to the program that delivers the best proceeds and rate.

Source: Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac multifamily program terms, 2026.

Top Markets for Multifamily Investment in 2026

Where you buy shapes how a deal underwrites. Investor demand in 2026 has shifted toward affordable, high-occupancy Midwest and Sun Belt metros with steady renter demand, while supply-heavy markets clear their construction backlog. The rankings below come from Arbor’s Spring 2026 Top Markets for Multifamily Investment report (data through Q4 2025 to February 2026), scoring the 50 largest metros across ten weighted categories. Nearly 9 in 10 U.S. metros posted year-over-year rent gains heading into 2026.

Also ranked in the 2026 top 20: Seattle, Denver, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Hartford, and Orlando & Miami. A separate lens, the PwC/ULI Emerging Trends 2026 survey, leads with Dallas/Fort Worth, Jersey City, Miami, Brooklyn, and Houston.

Rankings: Arbor Realty Trust / Chandan Economics, Spring 2026; PwC/ULI Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2026.

Multifamily Loans by Metro Market

Local financing pages for the largest apartment markets:

New York · Los Angeles · Chicago · Dallas · Houston · Atlanta · Miami · Washington, DC · Boston · San Francisco · San Jose · San Diego · Jersey City · Phoenix

For properties under $6 million, see our apartment loan programs. For 2026 investment rankings, see top markets.

Refinancing Into Higher Rates: What To Do If Your Loan Comes Due Soon

Written & reviewed by Stephen A. Sobin, President of Select Commercial Funding LLC
Updated October 25, 2026 · 30+ years in commercial real estate finance

An estimated $875 billion of commercial and multifamily mortgage debt matures in 2026, about 17% of the $5.0 trillion outstanding, per the Mortgage Bankers Association’s 2025 Survey of Loan Maturity Volumes (reported February 2026). That is down 9% from the $957 billion due in 2025, a sign the market is moving past the peak of the maturity wall.

Multifamily is the calmest corner of that wall. Only about 13% of multifamily balances mature in 2026, well below hotels at 30% and industrial at 23%. But a calm sector average is cold comfort if your own loan is one of the ones coming due, because the loan you are paying off was almost certainly written at a rate you cannot replace today.

Here is the problem, with real numbers. Take a $5,000,000 loan written at 4.00% on a 30-year amortization schedule. Debt service runs about $23,871 a month, or $286,449 a year. Refinance the same $5,000,000 at 6.50% and debt service becomes about $31,603 a month, or $379,241 a year. That is roughly $92,800 a year of additional debt service on the same balance.

Now apply the coverage test. At a 1.25x debt service coverage ratio, that loan needed about $358,000 of net operating income when it was written. The same balance at 6.50% needs about $474,000, an increase of 32%. Very few properties grew net operating income by a third over a five-year hold.

So read it the other way around, which is how a lender will read it. If your net operating income is unchanged, the same 1.25x coverage at 6.50% supports a loan of roughly $3,780,000 rather than $5,000,000. That is a refinance gap of about $1,220,000 that has to come from somewhere. This is the single most common situation we are asked about right now, and it is arithmetic rather than bad luck.

The five ways through it, in the order we usually look at them

• Refinance smaller and fund the difference. The cleanest option if you have the cash. You take the new loan at what the property supports and bring the gap to closing. Unwelcome, but it ends the problem permanently and resets your basis in the debt.
• Take a supplemental loan instead of refinancing. If your existing debt is a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan in good standing, a supplemental sits behind it rather than replacing it. You keep the original low rate on the original balance and borrow incrementally at today’s rate. On a loan written at 4%, keeping it alive is usually worth more than any term you could get on a new first mortgage.
• Extend or modify with the lender you already have. Servicers have more latitude than borrowers expect on a performing loan, particularly where the property is well occupied and the sponsor is not asking for cash out. This costs least and is asked for least often.
• Bridge to buy time. If net operating income is genuinely on a path to catch up, through a lease-up, a renovation completing, or expiring below-market leases, a two- or three-year bridge can carry you to a point where the permanent loan works. Bridge pricing is materially higher, so this only makes sense when there is a documented reason the income improves.
• Sell. We would rather say this than not. If the gap is large, the property is not improving, and the equity is still real, a sale at today’s pricing can beat writing a cheque to keep an asset that no longer earns its place in the portfolio.

If your loan matures within eighteen months, start now

The single most expensive mistake in this market is starting ninety days out. By then your options are whatever one lender will do quickly. Twelve months out, you can run a real process. Four things to do early:

• Get a current value opinion before you need one. The gap calculation above depends entirely on value and net operating income, and guessing at either wastes months.
• Price your exit from the existing loan. Yield maintenance and defeasance costs can be substantial and they move with rates. On a conduit loan, defeasance is a transaction of its own and needs its own timeline.
• Clean up the operating statement. Twelve months of well-documented collections underwrites better than eighteen months of explanations. If there are non-recurring items, separate them now so an underwriter does not have to guess.
• Find out what your property’s state does to the file. Property tax resets, assessment cycles and local rules change the expense line, sometimes by six figures, and they are the most common late surprise on a refinance. Our state pages set out the rule that most often moves a loan in each state.

Payment and coverage figures above are illustrative, calculated on a 30-year amortization schedule at the rates shown, and are not a quote. Maturity data: Mortgage Bankers Association, 2025 Commercial Real Estate Survey of Loan Maturity Volumes.

Multifamily Loans by State

Every state page below carries its own market data and the one local rule that most often changes a loan in that state. The short line under each link is what you will find there.

Apartment or Multifamily: What's the Difference?

They finance the same asset: buildings with five or more residential units. In everyday use, an apartment loan usually means financing under $6 million and a multifamily loan means larger balances over $6 million. The distinction matters because larger loans qualify for streamlined institutional underwriting and the tightest agency pricing.

Select Commercial arranges both, so whichever side of the line your property falls on, we can match it to the best program and terms. For smaller properties, see our apartment loans.