Hard Money Lenders Pennsylvania: 2,598 Loans, Act 6, Transfer Tax

What the 2025 federal record shows for Pennsylvania flippers

Directory pages for Pennsylvania hard money list lenders that pay to be listed. The federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) file lists loans that were made, with the note rate. We downloaded the Pennsylvania 2025 file of originated loans from the FFIEC and CFPB Data Browser: 272,809 originations. Of those, 27,078 were on investment property (occupancy type 3) and 20,612 of those were marked as made for a business or commercial purpose.

HMDA has no “hard money” field, so we use the proxy of our other state pages: conventional, first lien, closed-end, not reverse, 1-4 units, investment property, business purpose. That leaves 18,439 loans and $3,946,725,000. Two in three (11,968) have a 360-month term: rental and DSCR loans, with a 7.375% median (our Pennsylvania DSCR loan page reads that side). The short-term loans, 36 months or less, are the flip and bridge loans: 2,598 after we set aside 65 entered with a 30-month term, which look like 30-year loans keyed in the wrong unit. Our national hard money lenders page counts 2,646 for Pennsylvania because its filter keeps the 30-month entries and requires that no debt-to-income ratio be reported; the lenders and rates tell the same story. Lenders below HMDA's reporting thresholds are not in either count.

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

Volume rose 25.7% and dollars 32.3%, while the median rate fell 0.5 points (our arithmetic). The structure is the flip structure: 2,579 of the 2,598 are flagged interest-only and 2,546 have a balloon payment; 2,473 are on one- or two-unit properties and 125 on three or four units; 2,141 have a 12-month term and 117 a 6-month term. By purpose, 2,060 were purchases (10.5% median), 270 home improvement loans (12.0%), 136 refinances (10.25%) and 53 cash-out refinances (10.74%). Pennsylvania has an unusual cluster of 131 nine-month loans at a 12.0% median. Discount points and origination charges are reported as NA on 2,253 of the 2,258 six- and twelve-month loans in the proxy set and the prepayment term on all 2,258, so the note rate is only part of the price; use our hard money loan calculator to turn a quote into a total cost.

Who lent: one lender at 12.0% on every loan

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

Sixty-four lenders reported at least one short-term Pennsylvania loan, and five of them made 1,924 of the 2,598 (74.1%). Kiavi alone made 40.1%, up from 777 of 2,066 (37.6%) in 2024. The lender to look at twice is Crowdcopia: all 161 of its short-term loans carry a note rate of exactly 12.0%, 124 of them in Philadelphia County, and the 2024 Pennsylvania file has no loans under its name. Compared with the 9.8% median of Renovo or the 9.9% of Easy Street, that is a spread of 2.1 to 2.2 points on a $185,000 median loan, about $3,900 to $4,100 a year of interest-only (our arithmetic). It reads as a product with a fixed price rather than a market rate. Banks are nearly absent: 173 of the 2,598 loans came from lenders whose name reads as a bank or credit union (our name rule, not an official classification), while in the 30-year market the bank-named lenders made 1,354 loans at a 7.0% median against 7.5% for the others.

Kiavi pays us a referral fee when a loan closes through its button below. It belongs in a Pennsylvania box because the 2025 federal file shows it as the largest short-term investor lender in the state, 1,041 loans at a 10.95% median, and 414 of Philadelphia's 963. That is a fact about 2025; Kiavi's terms and history are in our Kiavi review. Lima One Capital (26 short-term Pennsylvania loans, 10.325% median) and Visio Lending, which reports no Pennsylvania loans under its own name, pay us nothing; Lima One's side is in our Lima One Capital review.

Where in Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and everybody else

Business-purpose investor loans by county, 2025 (HMDA, county FIPS from the file)

Philadelphia is 963 of the 2,598 short-term loans (37.1%), up from 652 of 2,066 (31.6%) in 2024, and it has the highest median rate of any large county, 10.99%. Its loans carry a 67.77% median loan-to-value, and the median property value on its 701 purchase loans that report one was $285,000 (the price we use in the tax example below). Kiavi made 414 of the 963 there (43.0%) and Crowdcopia 124 (12.9%); in Allegheny County Kiavi made 100 of 226 (44.2%) and Easy Street 29 (12.8%). The suburban ring, Montgomery, Bucks and Chester, is a different product: median loans of $335,000 to $380,000 at 9.95% to 10.0%. In northeastern Pennsylvania, Luzerne and Lackawanna counties together made 188 loans at $155,000 to $165,000. Fifty-five of the 67 counties have at least one short-term loan and 24 have ten or more; county is missing for 260 loans, so every county figure is a minimum. The full 67-county list is in the CSV.

Act 6: the rate law is written around a base figure, not $50,000

Pennsylvania's interest statute is the Loan Interest and Protection Law, Act 6 of 1974 (41 P.S. 101 and following). The version circulating on lender pages, a 6% cap on loans up to $50,000 with a business exception, is only the first of three layers. The saved statute text (FindLaw, current as of January 1, 2026) reads as follows.

Act 6 provisions that bear on a hard money loan

What the 2025 file adds is the size of the group that depends on the exemption. Only 6 of the 2,598 loans were $50,000 or less (median rate 8.515%), so the 6% rule is a footnote for this product. The line that matters is the base figure: 2,198 loans (84.6%) were at or below $319,777, and 2,059 of those, on one- or two-unit properties, were also priced above 7.25%, the highest monthly Act 6 ceiling of 2025 (the Department's 2025 list ran from 7% to 7.25%). Only 60 short-term loans in the file were at or below 7.25%. Our arithmetic from the file: 2,145 of 2,598 loans (82.6%) were both inside the base figure and above the ceiling, so they were lawful only if the business-loan exemption, or another exemption, applied.

Pennsylvania short-term loans by size, 2025 (HMDA)

Two cautions. First, the definition of a residential mortgage debtor in section 101 is “a non-corporate borrower,” so a loan to an LLC may sit outside the residential-mortgage protections whatever its size; HMDA does not show the borrower's form. Second, the Department's regulation defines a business loan with two conditions that an individual investor can fail: actual control over the managerial decisions of the enterprise and a sworn statement of use. Whether a given borrower meets that definition is a question for a Pennsylvania attorney. Our reading of the text is not a statement that any lender broke the law: the 82.6% only shows how much of the market relies on the exemption. The same regulation still defines a residential mortgage for sections 403 and 404 as $50,000 or less, while the statute uses the base figure; we follow the statute and flag the mismatch for counsel. Rates change monthly: the Department's page lists 7.75% for November 2026 and leaves December blank.

Licensing: the Mortgage Licensing Act has a business-purpose carve-out

Pennsylvania licenses people in the mortgage loan business under 7 Pa.C.S. Chapter 61, the Mortgage Licensing Act, through the Nationwide system. A “first mortgage loan” in the definitions is a loan “made primarily for personal, family or household use” and secured by a first lien on a dwelling or residential real estate (7 Pa.C.S. 6102). The licensing section then says: “This chapter shall not apply to mortgage loans made for business or commercial purposes” (6111(c)). Banks and credit unions are excepted (6112(1)), and so is a person who originates or negotiates less than four mortgage loans in a calendar year, unless the Department decides otherwise (6112(3)).

On the text, then, a lender making a loan to your LLC on a rental or flip house does not need this licence for that loan, and the same lender needs one to lend to someone who will live in the home. We read the statute as republished by Onecle, last modified October 8, 2016; the General Assembly's site refused our connection, so check for later amendments before relying on this, and we found no Department guidance on investor loans that we could save. A missing licence tells you nothing either way for a business loan. Look up the lender in the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System, check its other state licences and ask who funds the loan.

Foreclosure in Pennsylvania: judgment first, sheriff's sale second

The rules we saved describe a court action. The lender sues (Pa.R.C.P. 1141 and following), takes a judgment, and enforces it under Rules 3180 to 3183 (Rule 1149), which leads to a sheriff's sale. The rules that set the clock for a flip house:

Sheriff's sale steps in the Rules of Civil Procedure (231 Pa. Code, read October 22, 2026)

The minimum from handbill to deed is therefore about 50 days after the sale is set, before the lawsuit and judgment that come first (our arithmetic: 30 days of notice plus at least 20 days to the deed). Two notice regimes that borrowers hear about are narrower than they sound. Act 6's 30-day notice of intention to foreclose (41 P.S. 403) is owed to a “residential mortgage debtor,” the non-corporate borrower defined above, and Act 91's notice and counselling process does not apply where “the property securing the mortgage is not the principal residence of the mortgagor” (35 P.S. 1680.401c). The official note to Rule 1147 says a residential mortgage complaint should aver compliance with section 403. We found no published county count of investor foreclosures that we could save, so we give none, and no official duration for a business-purpose case. In Philadelphia the City's transfer tax page lists foreclosures among transfers taxed on a “computed value,” which matters at the exit.

Realty transfer tax: what two deeds cost in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and a 2% township

Pennsylvania charges a state tax of 1% of the value of the real estate on each document (72 P.S. 8102-C), and the municipality and school district add their own. In Allegheny County the total ranges from 2% to 5%, collected with the deed.

Realty transfer tax rates a Pennsylvania flipper meets

Philadelphia moved from 3.278% to 3.578% for the City share on July 1, 2025, the first change since 2018, and many guides still quote the old 4.278% total. The City taxes the sale price or assessed value plus any assumed debt, taxes entity transfers and transfers of 75% or more of a real estate company, and says the tax is usually split evenly between buyer and seller although the City may collect all of it from either. Our Pennsylvania DSCR loan page covers the rental-license and LLC-transfer side; here is the flip.

Example flip: buy at $285,000, sell at $400,000 (our arithmetic; $285,000 is the Philadelphia HMDA median purchase value, the sale price is hypothetical)

The July 2025 change added $2,055.00 to this flip. Against the loan, six months of interest-only payments on the Philadelphia median loan of $185,000 at the Philadelphia median 10.99% come to $10,165.75, so the transfer taxes on the two deeds are about 3.1 times the note-rate interest (our arithmetic; points, fees and any default interest are extra). Who pays each deed is a matter of the contract; model the whole $31,359.30 until your contract says otherwise. Run the rest of the deal in our fix and flip calculator.

What a Pennsylvania investor can do with this

1. Place the quote on your own county. In 2025 a note rate at or below 9.95% was in the cheapest quarter of Pennsylvania short-term loans and at or above 11.49% in the costliest. Philadelphia's median was 10.99%, Montgomery's 9.995% and Bucks's 9.95%.
2. Get a second quote when a lender prices every loan the same. One lender reported 161 loans at exactly 12.0%; the market ran from 9.0% to 12.0% for 80% of loans.
3. Write the business purpose into the papers. The business-loan exemption in Act 6 depends on actual control and a sworn statement of use. Ask your attorney whether to borrow through an LLC, and whether your guaranty changes the analysis.
4. Budget the transfer tax before the interest. In Philadelphia it is 4.578% on each deed; Pittsburgh is 5%. Model both deeds, and ask the title company what is claimed at closing.
5. Read the default clause with the sheriff's calendar in mind. The rules above need roughly 50 days from notice of sale to deed. Ask how default interest accrues and whether you sign a personal guaranty. Our private money lender page lists the clauses to compare.
6. Plan the refinance. The 30-year Pennsylvania median was 7.375% in 2025, so each month a 10.74% bridge stays in place costs the gap; see the BRRRR method.

FAQ

Loan data: FFIEC/CFPB HMDA Data Browser, Pennsylvania originated loans for 2025 and 2024 and the FFIEC 2024 and 2025 filer lists, downloaded October 22, 2026 (script hmda_pa_final.py and the request URLs in the data file). Statutes and rules: Loan Interest and Protection Law, 41 P.S. 101, 201, 301, 403, 404, 502 and 503, and 35 P.S. 1680.401c and 1680.403c, 72 P.S. 8102-C (FindLaw text current as of January 1, 2026); 7 Pa.C.S. 6102, 6111 and 6112 (Onecle, last modified October 8, 2016); 10 Pa. Code 7.2 and 231 Pa. Code Rules 1141, 1147, 1149, 3129.2, 3129.3, 3132 and 3135, Pennsylvania Code website; Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities, Act 6 Residential Lending Rates page and 2025 monthly listing; Pennsylvania Bulletin Doc. No. 25-1674. Transfer tax: City of Philadelphia Department of Revenue, Realty Transfer Tax page and release of July 28, 2025; Allegheny County, Realty Transfer Taxes page. 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.