Hard Money Lenders Michigan: 1,380 Loans, Rates, Law (2025)

What the 2025 federal record shows for Michigan investors

Michigan hard money pages usually list lenders that advertise. The federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) file lists loans that were made, with the note rate. We used the FFIEC and CFPB Data Browser file of Michigan conventional originations for 2025: 194,062 loans. Of those, 13,597 were on investment property, and 10,233 of them were marked as made for a business or commercial purpose.

HMDA has no “hard money” field. We use the proxy of our other state pages, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania: first lien, 1-4 units, closed-end, investment property, business purpose, no debt-to-income ratio, which leaves 9,403 loans. Of those, 4,760 had a term of 360 months or more (rental and DSCR loans; see our DSCR loan Michigan page) and 1,393 had a term of 36 months or less. We set aside 13 short-term entries with a 30-month term, all from one lender whose median rate (7.5%) looks like a 30-year loan keyed in the wrong unit, which leaves 1,380. Our national rate page counts all 1,393 for Michigan; the median is 10.75% either way.

Michigan short-term business-purpose investor loans, 2025 (HMDA, our filter)

The loans are mostly purchases on single houses. The median loan-to-value on the 1,264 loans that report it was 68.39%. By purpose, 1,146 were purchases, 129 rate-and-term refinances, 43 cash-out refinances, 40 home improvement loans and 22 “other.” The term is 12 months on 1,157 of the 1,393 short-term loans, 24 months on 67 and 18 months on 36. A total of 1,279 of the 1,380 (92.7%) were on one-unit properties and 101 on two to four units. Points, fees and prepayment terms for business-purpose loans are not in HMDA, so use our hard money loan calculator to turn a quote into a total cost. The public file rounds every loan amount to the midpoint of a $10,000 band, so a reported $95,000 is a loan between $90,000 and $99,999.

The rate does not fall as the loan grows, except at the top. Loans of $50,000 to $99,999 (185 loans) had a median of 11%, loans of $100,000 to $199,999 (769) 10.95%, $200,000 to $299,999 (249) 10.75% and $300,000 or more (171) 10.5%. Only 6 loans were under $50,000, which is why Michigan has no cheap small-loan cluster like the one we found in Ohio's Mahoning County.

Who made the loans

Largest lenders of Michigan short-term investor loans, 2025 (HMDA, names from the FFIEC 2025 filer list)

Forty-four lenders reported at least one loan, and the ten largest filer IDs made 90.1% of them. Kiavi alone made 48.8%, and RCN Capital's two filer IDs together 19.0%. Banks are nearly absent from this product: 46 of the 1,380 loans (3.3%) came from lenders whose name reads as a bank, savings association or credit union (our name rule, not an official classification; we leave out the word “trust” because it would count Merchants Mortgage & Trust, a private lender). The table is the reported record, not a recommendation of any lender; each lender's own review is linked where we have one: Kiavi, RCN Capital, Loan Funder, LendingOne, Lima One Capital and Easy Street Capital. Lima One made 9 short-term loans in Michigan, and Visio Lending's affiliate Investor Mortgage Finance LLC (our label from earlier pages) none, though it reported 56 Michigan 30-year loans.

Kiavi pays us a referral fee when a loan closes through its button below. It belongs in a Michigan box because the 2025 federal file shows it as the state's largest short-term investor lender: 88.6% of its Michigan short-term loans had a 12-month term. Lima One Capital and Visio Lending pay us nothing. Compare Kiavi with Lima One before you choose.

Detroit and the rest of the state

HMDA names the county, not the city, so Detroit sits inside Wayne County's numbers together with its suburbs. Wayne had 531 of the 1,380 loans (38.5%), with a median note rate of 10.99%, a middle half between 10% and 11.95%, and a median loan of $135,000. The other 82 counties had 849 loans at a median of 10.74% and $165,000. Kiavi made 361 of the Wayne loans (68.0%) against 312 of the 849 elsewhere (36.7%); the other lenders in Wayne, 170 loans, had the same 10.99% median as Kiavi. The four largest counties had 811 loans (58.8%), and the eight largest 900 (65.2%).

Short-term investor loans by county, 2025 (HMDA, our filter; median rate shown for counties with 20 or more loans)

Fifty-one counties had at least one loan. The picture is a Detroit market priced about a quarter point above the rest of the state and about $30,000 smaller per loan, and a Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor market with larger loans. Our Michigan DSCR loan page shows the same Wayne concentration in 30-year loans.

Michigan's interest law, read against the 2025 rates

Michigan does not have one rate rule for a hard money loan; it has four statutes that point different ways, and which one a lender uses depends on the borrower and the lender. We read the text and compare it with what the lenders reported. This is not legal advice.

Michigan rate rules that a hard money loan can meet (statute text saved October 23, 2026)

Two numbers from the 2025 record matter. First, 1,310 of the 1,380 loans (94.9%) went to entities and 70 to natural persons. The entity loans fit the MCL 438.61(3) route on the face of the statute; for the 70 loans to people, HMDA cannot show whether a sworn business-purpose statement was signed. Second, 525 loans (38.0%) had a note rate above 11%, 158 above 12% and 20 above 13%. The 11% line in 438.31c(6) is a cap on a different route and includes points and fees, so a borrower whose lender relies on 438.31c rather than 438.61 should ask for the written basis. We do not claim any loan is unlawful: HMDA shows neither the borrower's legal form, the points, nor the statute the lender used, and the bank paragraph of that section, 438.61(2), is itself “subject to any other applicable law of this state or of the United States which regulates the rate of interest,” a phrase the non-bank paragraph does not repeat. We did not analyze federal law that may apply.

The stakes of an error are on the lender: MCL 438.32 says a lender who charges more than the act allows “is barred from the recovery of any interest, any official fees, delinquency or collection charge, attorney fees or court costs,” and the borrower may recover attorney fees and court costs. Two clauses deserve a line-by-line read in the note: a default-rate step-up, given the 438.31c(2) sentence on an initial rate that “may be increased”, and the prepayment fee, which for a single family dwelling is limited to 1% of a prepayment made within 3 years under 438.31c(2)(c). Our extension and default interest page explains how those clauses work in practice. Of the 1,380 loans, 1,279 were on one-unit properties.

Licensing: Michigan's mortgage laws turn on purpose

The Mortgage Brokers, Lenders, and Servicers Licensing Act says that a person “shall not act as a mortgage broker, mortgage lender, or mortgage servicer without first obtaining a license under this act or registering under section 6,” unless an exemption applies (MCL 445.1652(1)). But its definition of “mortgage loan” is “a loan secured by a first mortgage on real property” used as a dwelling for “4 or fewer families,” and it excludes “A loan transaction in which the proceeds are not used primarily for a personal, family, or household purpose” (445.1651a(r)). Depository institutions are outside the act (445.1675(a)), and so is a lender that with its affiliates makes 10 or fewer mortgage loans in a calendar year (445.1675(g)). The Secondary Mortgage Loan Act, which covers junior liens, defines its loan the same way, as one “made to a person for personal, family, or household purposes” (MCL 493.51(2)(p)).

What follows from the text: a loan to an LLC to buy and renovate a house for sale or rent is for a business purpose, so it is not a “mortgage loan” under the licensing act, and a lender that makes only such loans would not need that license for them. We did not find a requirement in these acts for a lender that makes only business-purpose loans, but we did not read the whole Michigan code and found no guidance from the state regulator to save. A loan to you personally for a house you will live in, or a mixed-purpose loan, is different. Check any lender's licences in the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System before you sign, and see our private money lender page on who funds the loan.

Foreclosure: by advertisement, then a redemption period

A Michigan lender does not need a court action to foreclose a mortgage with a power of sale. A mortgage “which contains a power of sale, upon default being made in any condition of such mortgage, may be foreclosed by advertisement” (MCL 600.3201). The foreclosing party must own the debt or be its servicing agent, the mortgage must be recorded, and there must be no pending action at law for the debt unless it was discontinued or an execution came back unsatisfied (600.3204(1)). The steps that matter to an investor are the notice, the sale and the redemption right.

Michigan foreclosure by advertisement (statute text saved October 23, 2026)

The redemption period is what sets Michigan apart from Ohio's court sale. A lender who bids in at the sale does not own the house free of the borrower's rights for 6 months if more than 66-2/3% of the original loan is still owed, and for a year if less is owed (our reading of the text), and the redemption price carries interest at the mortgage rate. On an interest-only loan nothing has been paid down, so the 6-month period would apply on our reading; a borrower who has paid the loan below 66-2/3% of the original amount is on the 1-year clock. Sections 3205a to 3205d, which covered notice requirements and a loan-modification process, were repealed effective June 30, 2013. We did not save a statewide count of Michigan foreclosures or sale timelines from the courts, so we give none.

The county does not appear in the sale, but it does in the price you pay after one: under MCL 211.27a(3), on a transfer of ownership the taxable value for the following calendar year is the property's state equalized valuation, and the annual cap applies again from then on. A conveyance by deed is a transfer of ownership (211.27a(6)(a)), as is a sale of more than 50% of an entity that owns the property (211.27a(6)(h)). A flip bought after years of capped taxes will be taxed at the uncapped value from the next calendar year; our property tax appeal page explains how to contest it.

What the transfer tax adds to a flip

Two taxes apply to a deed. The state real estate transfer tax is $3.75 for each $500 or fraction of value (MCL 207.525(1)); the county real estate transfer tax is 55 cents for each $500 or fraction in a county with fewer than 2,000,000 people, and up to 75 cents in a county of 2,000,000 or more (207.504). The seller or grantor is liable for the state tax (207.523(2)). The Census file shows Wayne County, the largest in Michigan, with 1,793,896 people in its April 1, 2020 estimates base, so on our reading every county is in the 55-cent group. A written instrument given as security is exempt (207.526(d)), which is why a mortgage does not trigger it.

Example flip: sell at three prices; seller's transfer tax (our arithmetic from MCL 207.525 and 207.504)

For scale, six months of interest on a $120,000 interest-only loan at the 10.75% median is $6,450 (our arithmetic), before points and fees; the transfer taxes on a $150,000 sale are 20.0% of that. The seller pays by statute, so a flipper bears the tax at the exit, although the contract can allocate it differently. Run the rest in our fix and flip calculator, and see the BRRRR method for the refinance exit into a 30-year loan at the 7.75% Michigan median.

What a Michigan investor can do with this

1. Place the quote on the distribution. A note rate at or below 10% was in the cheapest quarter of Michigan short-term loans in 2025; at or above 11.49% in the costliest quarter. In Wayne County the middle half ran from 10% to 11.95%.
2. Ask which statute the lender relies on. For an LLC borrower the usual route is MCL 438.61(3), capped at the 25% criminal usury line. If you sign personally, ask whether the lender wants the sworn business-purpose statement, and why.
3. Read the default and prepayment clauses. MCL 438.31c(2) speaks to a rate that “may be increased” and limits a prepayment fee on a single family dwelling to 1% within 3 years. Ask for the clause numbers in writing.
4. Know the redemption clock. After a foreclosure sale you keep a right to redeem for 6 months if more than 66-2/3% of the original loan is owed, otherwise 1 year, at the bid plus mortgage-rate interest.
5. Price the exit. The seller pays $860 to $1,720 in transfer taxes on a $100,000 to $200,000 sale; the buyer's taxable value resets to the state equalized value the next calendar year.
6. Know the lender. Ask who funds the loan, and read our hard money lender comparison, the fix and flip loans guide and the best fix and flip lender comparison.

FAQ

Loan data: FFIEC/CFPB HMDA Data Browser, Michigan originated conventional loans for 2025, downloaded October 23, 2026 (script hmda_mi.py in the data folder), and the FFIEC 2025 filer list. Statutes: Michigan Compiled Laws 207.504, 207.523, 207.525, 207.526, 211.27a, 438.31, 438.31c, 438.32, 438.41, 438.61, 445.1651a, 445.1652, 445.1675, 493.51, 600.3201, 600.3204, 600.3205a, 600.3208, 600.3216, 600.3228, 600.3240 and 600.3278, from legislature.mi.gov through the Internet Archive (captures dated April 2025 to October 2026; the state site did not respond to our automated requests), read October 23, 2026. County population: U.S. Census Bureau county population estimates, 2020-2024. All counts, shares, medians and tax figures are our arithmetic. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal, tax or lending advice, and not a loan offer.