Commercial Real Estate Loan Calculator (2026): Payment, Balloon, DSCR

The calculator

Every field is editable and “Reset to page defaults” restores the example. Three defaults are sourced: the 6.34% rate, the 7-year term and the 65% loan-to-value are the 2025 HMDA medians for balloon loans of $1 million to $4.99 million on 5+ unit properties (the table below shows the other loan sizes). The 1.25x DSCR and 75% maximum LTV are the lowest figures in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac term sheets. The $3,200,000 price (the median loan of $2,085,000 at a 65% loan-to-value), the $208,000 NOI (a 6.5% cap rate), the 25-year amortization, the 1% fee and $15,000 of closing costs are examples, not records: replace them with your own. The second rate button adds the rise in the 7-year Treasury yield since 2025 (explained below).

What the 2025 record says about rates, by loan size

HMDA does not call anything “commercial”. The table below uses the group that is both commercial and reported: loans on properties of 5 or more units, originated in 2025, conventional, first lien, for a purchase or a refinance, with a note rate and term reported (27,919 loans from 1,053 lenders). 10,935 of the 43,069 originated 5+ unit loans (25.4%) report the rate and term as “Exempt” in the public file, so the medians describe the lenders that report them. Loan amounts in the public file are rounded (they end in 5,000).

2025 originated 5+ unit loans, conventional first lien, by loan amount

Size is the biggest driver in the record. Rates fall step by step from 7.25% on loans under $500,000 to 5.43% on loans of $25 million and over, while the median loan-to-value stays between 62.3% and 64.7% for every band above $1 million. The shape of the loan changes too: the median term goes from 180 months at $1 million to $2.49 million to 60 months at $25 million and over, and the share with an interest-only payment rises from 33.7% to 87.2%. If your loan is under $1 million, the best public anchor is the first two rows, not the headline 6.50%.

By purpose, purchase loans had a median rate of 6.65% (12,991 loans), refinances without cash out 6.29% (9,918) and cash-out refinances 6.30% (5,010).

Same bands, banks and credit unions against non-banks

Below $1 million the two groups differ most: banks and credit unions had a median of 7.00% under $500,000 and 6.70% from $500,000 to $999,999, while non-banks had 8.45% and 7.88%. From $1 million to $2.49 million non-banks were still above banks (7.38% against 6.25%); from $5 million up the order flips, because that is where the apartment lenders that sell to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sit. Lender type comes from the FFIEC institution record (banks, thrifts and credit unions against everyone else), and 1,053 lenders made the core loans.

Who sells the loan decides the rate: agency apartment loans

HMDA says who bought a loan in the year it was made. The loans sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac are the agency multifamily loans: 3,763 of them, median size $13,945,000, median rate 5.38%, median loan-to-value 65% and 80% with an interest-only flag. Loans nobody bought in 2025 (kept on the lender's balance sheet) are the bank and credit union loans most borrowers meet below $5 million.

By what happened to the loan in 2025

The largest lenders in the record show the same split. These are 2025 medians for the lender's conventional first-lien 5+ unit loans in the core set:

Walker & Dunlop and Berkadia are agency-style lenders; JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. are the large banks; Velocity Commercial Capital is a non-bank whose loans were not sold to the agencies and whose median rate is far higher. The point for a borrower is the spread inside one asset class: with the same type of building, the median runs from 5.37% to 10.74% depending on the channel. FHA-insured 5+ unit loans (281 first-lien loans with a rate) had a median rate of 5.74% and a median term of 420 months, in a separate government program.

What none of this covers. The record has no office, retail or industrial building loans, no loan with a lender below the reporting threshold, no points or fees, and no DSCR. If you are buying one of those, treat the tables as a floor for what a bank might say, not as a quote.

The rate has moved since 2025: what the Treasury did

The 2025 file is last year’s loans. Commercial fixed rates are priced as a spread over a Treasury yield of similar maturity, and FRED’s daily series show the move:

Treasury and SOFR yields, 2025 average against October 7, 2026 (FRED, downloaded October 9, 2026)

The seven-year yield is the closest match to the 84-month median term of the default segment. If lenders held the same spread, a loan that cost 6.34% on average in 2025 would cost about 7.40% now (6.34% plus 1.057 points, rounded; our arithmetic). That is an estimate for planning, not a quote: spreads change, and the loans in the file were priced through the year, not on the average day. The second rate button in the calculator uses it. Floating-rate loans move with SOFR instead, which was lower on October 7, 2026 than its 2025 average.

Balloon payments: what you owe when the term ends

The calculator’s balloon line is the remaining balance after the term’s payments. In the record, 21,210 of the 27,919 core loans have a balloon flag; the 6,707 without one have a median term of 300 months, a median rate of 7.20% and a median loan of $715,000, which is the 20- and 25-year loan on a smaller building. Balloon loans have a median size of $2,005,000.

Loan term in the 2025 record

Three terms dominate: 60, 84 and 120 months. A 10-year term is not cheaper in the record, but it is a different balloon: on the default loan the balloon after 5, 7 and 10 years is $1,879,568, $1,779,884 and $1,604,603 (our arithmetic), that is 90.4%, 85.6% and 77.1% of the original loan.

Worked example: payment, balloon, DSCR and maximum loan

All figures are our arithmetic from the calculator’s formulas (script check_math.py). The default deal is a $3,200,000 building with $208,000 of NOI, a 65% loan ($2,080,000), 6.34%, 25-year amortization and a 7-year term.

Default deal and what changes it

Four lessons from the table. First, at a 1.25x test the DSCR binds long before the 75% LTV does: the LTV loan is $2,400,000 and the DSCR loan $2,084,450, so a seller’s cap rate and your note rate matter more than the down payment. Second, a 1.06-point rate rise cuts the supportable loan by $191,387, or 9.2% (our arithmetic), the same effect as a 9.2% lower NOI. Third, a longer amortization lowers the payment but leaves a bigger balloon. Fourth, interest-only helps cash flow in the first years and gives you the balloon of a 5-year amortization at the end of seven.

Refinance risk on the same deal (our arithmetic)

The refinance test is the reason to run the calculator twice, once at today’s rate and once at the rate you fear in year seven. A loan sized to the lender’s maximum at origination leaves no room if rates are higher when the balloon comes due, unless NOI or value has grown.

What lenders publish: DSCR, LTV, amortization

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac publish their multifamily terms; banks do not publish theirs for office, retail or industrial buildings, so the agency documents are the only public leverage anchor and apply to apartment buildings of 5 or more units (and eligible mixed-use properties at Freddie Mac).

Published agency multifamily terms (Freddie Mac term sheets dated April 2026; Fannie Mae pages read October 9, 2026)

Freddie Mac’s sheet adds a rule worth knowing: no refinance test is necessary if the loan has an amortizing DCR of 1.40x or greater and an LTV of 60% or less, which says what the agency regards as a loan that can be refinanced without a test. These are program ceilings for stabilized apartment buildings, not what a borrower with a thin file gets, and Freddie Mac’s sheet says its terms are subject to change without notice. The 2025 median loan-to-value of 64.5% in HMDA is well below the 75% to 80% limits: lenders lend less than they can.

Owner-occupied: SBA 504 and 7(a)

If you will occupy the building with your own business, two federal programs are the public anchors. SBA’s 504 page states a maximum loan of $5.5 million, financing for the purchase, construction or renovation of existing buildings or land, and no loans to businesses engaged in nonprofit, passive or speculative activities. In SBA’s FOIA data, 504 loans approved in fiscal year 2026 through June 30 (4406 loans) had a median SBA-backed debenture of $747,500 next to a median bank first mortgage of $923,250 and a median project of $1,675,009; 4145 of them had a 300-month (25-year) term, 182 had 240 months and 79 had 120 months (our arithmetic from the file). One Certified Development Company posted 504 debenture rates of 6.97% for 25 years, 6.97% for 20 years and 6.59% for 10 years on October 8, 2026; that is the rate on the SBA-backed share only, and the bank part of a 504 project is priced separately. Our SBA 504 loan rates page covers the structure, fees and rates.

For 7(a), the FOIA file has an initial interest rate but no use-of-proceeds field, so we use loans with a term of 240 months or longer as a proxy for real-estate-secured loans (it also catches other long-term uses). In fiscal year 2026 through June 30, the median initial rate was 7.0% on 707 fixed-rate loans and 8.25% on 3617 variable-rate loans; for loans of $1 million or more it was 8.0% on 2530 loans. A year earlier (fiscal 2025) the medians were 7.25% fixed and 9.0% variable.

Which anchor applies to which loan

What banks say about their own standards

The Federal Reserve’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey of July 2026 (responses due July 2, 2026) reports that banks generally reported easier standards and basically unchanged demand for commercial real estate loans over the second quarter. Within that, moderate and modest net shares of banks reported having eased standards for nonfarm nonresidential and multifamily property loans, respectively, while demand for both was basically unchanged. In the same survey, moderate net shares of banks said their current standards for those two loan types sat at the tighter end of their own historical range. Read together: banks are easing, and fewer of them report standards at the tight end than a year earlier, but several still sit there, which fits a 2025 record where the median loan-to-value was 64.5%, not 75%.

What you can do with this

1. Run two cases. Enter your price, NOI and the lender’s quote, then re-run at 1 point higher for the rate and at the refinance rate you can live with in year 5, 7 or 10. If the balloon is not covered in the second case, shorten the plan, borrow less or lengthen the amortization.
2. Find which test binds. If the DSCR loan is below the LTV loan, a larger down payment will not help; a lower rate, a longer amortization or a higher NOI will. If LTV binds, the lender’s appraisal is the number to fight over.
3. Check your rate against the right row. Under $1 million, use the first two rows of the size table; from $1 million to $5 million, 6.36% and 6.14% with the 1.057 point Treasury move on top; above $5 million, compare agency lenders with each other, not with a bank.
4. Ask in writing: the DSCR and LTV tests and how NOI is underwritten, recourse and guaranty, prepayment terms (yield maintenance, defeasance or a step-down), the amortization and whether interest-only months are available, reserves and escrows, and the fee in points.
5. Know your next page. A rental buyer whose building is 1-4 units should use the DSCR loan calculator; to test value and yield start with the cap rate calculator; a short-term loan before you stabilize the building is covered by the bridge loan page and the hard money lenders page; the SBA 504 loan rates page is for owner-occupied buildings.

None of these loans is something we are paid to refer, so there is no lender box on this page. If you want to know when the numbers change, the alert below is the only thing we offer.

FAQ

Sources: HMDA loan-level data (FFIEC Data Browser, nationwide originated 5+ unit loans for 2025, state files downloaded October 9, 2026; script hmda_multifamily_2025.py and its output; lender types from the FFIEC institution records); Freddie Mac Optigo Fixed-Rate and Conventional Small term sheets (mf.freddiemac.com, dated April 2026); Fannie Mae fixed-rate and Small Mortgage Loan Program term sheet pages (multifamily.fanniemae.com, read October 9, 2026); FRED daily series DGS5, DGS7, DGS10 and SOFR (fred.stlouisfed.org, downloaded October 9, 2026); Federal Reserve Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, July 2026 (federalreserve.gov); SBA 7(a) and 504 FOIA data as of June 30, 2026 (data.sba.gov) and SBA’s 504 loans page; SomerCor 504 rate page (October 8, 2026 pricing). The note-rate medians are 2025 records, not quotes. All payments, balloons, DSCRs, maximum loans, percentage changes and the 7.40% estimate are our arithmetic (check_math.py). This is analysis of public records, not investment, legal, lending or tax advice, and not a loan offer.