Wisconsin Multifamily Loans

Wisconsin Apartment Building Loans

Not every Wisconsin apartment property is over $6 million, and we finance smaller buildings too. For 5+ unit Wisconsin apartment properties from $1,500,000 to $6 million, see our Wisconsin apartment loans page for Fannie Mae Small Loan, Freddie Mac SBL, bank and credit union options.

Wisconsin Cannot Have Rent Control, but Your Development Agreement Can

Wisconsin is the clean inverse of Washington. Where Washington caps rent increases by statute, Wisconsin forbids any municipality from doing so. But the preemption has a carve-out that moves the entire question from statute into your deal documents, and that is where the diligence has to go.

The preemption. Wis. Stat. § 66.1015(1) provides: No city, village, town or county may regulate the amount of rent or fees charged for the use of a residential rental dwelling unit. Section 66.1015(3)(b) adds: No city, village, town, or county may enact, impose, or enforce an inclusionary zoning requirement, with inclusionary zoning defined as a regulation requiring a certain number or percentage of residential units in a development to be made available for rent or sale to households at or below a percentage of median income. The section was enacted in 1991 and amended as recently as 2021.

So trended rent and exit assumptions in Wisconsin face no statutory ceiling, and there is no regulatory-cap risk to price into an exit cap rate. For a market-rate property that is a meaningful advantage over Washington, Minnesota’s regulated municipalities, New Jersey’s patchwork and New York.

Now the carve-out, and it is the whole point. Section 66.1015(2) permits a city, village, town, county, housing authority or the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority to regulate rent by (a) entering a rental agreement for a unit it owns or operates, or (b) entering an agreement with a private person who regulates rent or fees charged for a residential rental dwelling unit.

Read subsection (2)(b) carefully. Rent restrictions that an owner agreed to are fully enforceable notwithstanding the preemption. A tax increment financing development agreement, a state housing authority loan, a land write-down, a payment-in-lieu arrangement or a municipal incentive package can all carry rent and income restrictions that bind the property and every subsequent owner, and the statute that bars rent control does nothing to them.

So in Wisconsin, rent-restriction risk is contractual and deal-specific rather than statutory. The underwriting task is not checking for an ordinance that cannot legally exist. It is reading the development agreement and every municipal or housing authority agreement of record against the property, confirming the remaining term of any restriction, and confirming whether it survives transfer and foreclosure. On a property that took public money at any point in its history, that is the first document to request, ahead of the rent roll.

Two more Wisconsin features that affect the numbers.

Your purchase price invites a reassessment. Under Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1), real property is valued by the assessor in the manner specified in the Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual, from actual view or from the best information the assessor can practicably obtain, at the full value which could ordinarily be obtained therefor at private sale, and the assessor must consider recent arm’s length sales of the subject property where they conform to professionally acceptable appraisal practice.

Because the standard is full value at private sale and the subject property’s own recent sale is an expressly named input, a Wisconsin apartment acquired above its prior assessment should expect reassessment toward the purchase price. Underwrite year-one property taxes off what you paid, not off the seller’s bill. On a $25,000,000 purchase of a property last assessed at $15,000,000, that step-up is the largest single swing item in the expense underwriting and the most common reason a Wisconsin pro forma misses in its first year. Confirm with the municipal assessor how your property is classified and when values are next set, since practice varies.

And Wisconsin charges nothing to record your mortgage. Under Wis. Stat. § 77.22 there is a real estate transfer fee at the rate of 30 cents for each $100 of value or fraction thereof, 0.30%, on every conveyance not exempted, imposed on the grantor, with the return signed by both grantor and grantee on the Secretary of Revenue’s prescribed form. On a $25,000,000 purchase that is $75,000 on the deed.

The cost sits entirely on the conveyance rather than on the loan, which makes Wisconsin materially cheaper than a mortgage recording tax state for putting on new debt, increasing a loan, taking supplemental financing or refinancing. Compare Alabama at fifteen cents per $100 of indebtedness uncapped, Tennessee at eleven and a half cents uncapped, or Maryland where a $20,000,000 loan can carry $230,000 in recordation tax by itself. Wisconsin puts the cost on the sale instead.

One closing-mechanics item that catches people. The statute provides that submission of the completed return and payment of the fee are prerequisites to acceptance of the conveyance for recording, and the register of deeds enters the fee on the face of the instrument before recording. The transfer return therefore sits on the critical path to recording the deed, and so to recording your mortgage behind it. It is a small form with the power to delay a closing.

Finally, if your project involves tax increment financing, note that under Wis. Stat. § 66.1105(4) a district may be created only if the equalized value of taxable property in the proposed district, plus the value increment of all existing districts, does not exceed twelve percent of the municipality’s total equalized value. In communities that have used the tool heavily there is no capacity left, which is a feasibility question to settle before a development budget relies on it.

Wisconsin Multifamily Loan Programs

As a broker, we compare every large-balance program to find your best fit:

Recent Multifamily Loan Closings

A sample of apartment and multifamily loans we have arranged for investors nationwide.

$7,000,000

Cobleskill & Potsdam, NY

Two properties, 152 units total
10-yr term · 5-yr fixed · 25-yr amort

Refinance & Acquisition

$17,281,000

Valparaiso, IN

224-unit apartment complex
10-yr fixed · 30-yr amort · non-recourse

Multifamily Refinance

$7,172,400

Wichita Falls, TX

88-unit apartment property
35-yr fixed · non-recourse

Multifamily Refinance

$6,827,000

West Chester, PA

64-unit garden apartments
7-yr fixed · 30-yr amort · non-recourse

Multifamily Refinance

$6,000,000

Enfield, CT

90-unit garden apartment complex
10-yr fixed · 30-yr amort · non-recourse

Multifamily Refinance

$4,620,000

Crystal Lake, IL

69-unit apartment complex
10-yr fixed · 2-yr interest-only

Apartment Refinance

See more recent closings →

Other Property & Loan Types We Finance in Wisconsin

As a full-service commercial mortgage broker, we arrange Wisconsin financing across every major property and loan type:

We consider commercial loan requests of all sizes, beginning at $1,500,000.

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