Hard Money Loans New York: Who Actually Lends in NYC (2026)

Who lends private money on New York City houses: the property-record count

Every mortgage on a house in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn or Queens is recorded with the City Register, and the city publishes the index as open data (ACRIS): the document type, date and amount, the parties, and the tax lot with its property type. Hard money pages for New York list lenders that advertise. This page counts the lenders that actually recorded mortgages, which no ranking page does. For the national federal-data view, see our hard money lenders ranking and our page on who private money lenders are.

How we picked the private lenders

We downloaded every mortgage (document type MTGE) recorded from January 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026: 78,587 documents. We kept the 41,611 on 1-4 family house lots only (ACRIS property types for dwellings of 1 to 4 families, 1-4 family buildings with a store or office, and 1-2 family houses with a garage or vacant land) and with an amount above $0. Then we applied one rule, written in our script before we looked at the names:

• the lender is an entity named on at least 20 of those mortgages;
• it is not a bank, credit union or savings institution, and not a government, housing agency, nonprofit, timeshare or home-equity-investment company;
• an LLC, corporation or other entity is the borrower on at least 60% of its mortgages, which is what business-purpose lending looks like in the record;
• it is not a 30-year rental lender: lenders that file HMDA and made fewer than 20% of their 2025 New York business-purpose loans with a term of 36 months or less are moved out.

That rule gave 46 business-purpose non-bank lenders. Eight are 30-year rental (DSCR) lenders by their own federal filings, with 599 mortgages, led by Emporium TPO (183) and Velocity Commercial Capital (102); our DSCR pages cover that loan. The remaining 38 are the private-money set on this page. We also left out one lender that files HMDA but had no 2025 New York loans in the file, so its term mix could not be read.

What the city record cannot see

• Staten Island is missing. The Department of Finance says ACRIS covers “Manhattan, Queens, Bronx, and Brooklyn from 1966 to the present”; Staten Island documents are recorded by the Richmond County Clerk.
• MERS hides the lender. 8,877 of the 41,611 mortgages name only Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems as mortgagee, and 1,974 of those had an entity borrower. Any private lender that records through MERS is undercounted here. Kiavi reported 27 short-term New York City loans to HMDA for 2025; ACRIS names it on 16 1-4 family mortgages recorded that year.
• Smaller lenders are below the line. A lender with fewer than 20 mortgages in 21 months is not in the set, and neither are the 623 mortgages whose lenders were private individuals ($428,694,812 in total). We count those but never publish an individual's name.
• Amounts are face amounts. A building-loan or consolidated mortgage can record a larger number than the cash advanced on day one, and ACRIS has no rate, term or points.

The private lenders on New York City 1-4 family houses

The 15 largest private lenders by mortgages recorded, January 2025 to September 2026 (ACRIS, 1-4 family lots, four boroughs)

The other 23 lenders in the set, from Conventus (46 mortgages) to Kiavi Funding (20), are in the data file. Face amounts are rounded to the nearest $0.1 million from the exact sums in the file; “assignments out” counts every assignment of mortgage recorded in the period with that lender as assignor, including assignments of loans made before 2025.

Four readings:

• The largest New York City private lenders are local and mostly invisible to federal data. Broadview Capital, the second-largest, recorded $368.8 million on 372 mortgages and is not an HMDA filer, so it appears in no federal ranking. The 30 non-filers hold 62.2% of the set's mortgages.
• Loan sizes are New York sizes. The median private mortgage was $612,000, above the $554,766 median of all 1-4 family mortgages in the same period. 1,157 were between $500,000 and $999,999, 623 between $1 million and $2.5 million, and 133 were $2,500,000 or more.
• Two-family houses lead. By first property code, 1,141 mortgages were on two-family dwellings, 769 on one-family, 727 on three-family and 281 on four-family.
• The national names are small here. Kiavi Funding, a national flip lender, is named on 20 New York City 1-4 family mortgages in the period; Express Capital Holdings, a Brooklyn lender we reviewed, on 70 (Express Capital Financing review).

One lender in the table publishes its terms in an SEC filing. Manhattan Bridge Capital's 10-K for 2025 says its loans have “a stated fixed interest rate, typically ranging from 9% to 12.5% per annum,” that it usually receives origination fees or points “ranging from 0% to 2% of the original principal amount,” that acquisition loans usually do not exceed 75% of appraised value, that the initial term is not more than one year, and that “We require a personal guarantee from the principal or principals of the borrower.” Those are one lender's terms, not a market rate, but they show what a New York hard money loan contains besides the rate: points, a one-year balloon and a personal guaranty even when the borrower is an LLC.

Kiavi pays us a referral fee when a loan closes through its button below. It belongs in a New York box because it lends on flips and bridges here: 309 short-term New York loans in 2025 HMDA data at a 10.5% median, 27 of them in New York City at an 11.45% median on a $605,000 median loan. It is not the largest lender in the city record, as the table shows. RCN Capital (111 short-term New York loans, 10.39% median) and LendingOne (70 loans, 10% median) also lend on New York 1-4 family investments and pay us nothing.

Brooklyn and the Bronx: where private money goes

Private-lender mortgages by borough, January 2025 to September 2026 (ACRIS, 1-4 family lots)

Brooklyn has more than half of the private loans, but the Bronx has the highest private share: one in eight 1-4 family mortgages recorded there in the period came from a lender in the set. Queens is the opposite case, with the most 1-4 family mortgages of any borough and a private share of 3.9%, and the smallest private median ($481,025). The Bronx median ($701,000) is above Brooklyn's, and several lenders concentrate there, such as YK 2021 LLC (88% of its mortgages in the Bronx) and Broad X Funding (70%).

Who ends up holding a New York private loan

A private lender that records the mortgage does not always keep it. The 38 lenders recorded 2,955 assignments of mortgage between January 2025 and September 2026.

Assignees on assignments recorded by the 38 private lenders, January 2025 to September 2026

What this means for a borrower: 1,228 of the 3,131 private mortgages (39.2%) already share a tax lot with an assignment out recorded by the same lender, 349 of them dated the same day as the mortgage. The company you deal with at closing may be selling the loan to a fund such as Toorak Capital or Icecap's debt fund, or pledging it to a bank: Manhattan Bridge Capital's 10-K says it is “party to a credit line agreement with Webster Bank, N.A,” and Webster names are the main assignees on its assignments and on those of Bayport Funding and Wisdom Equities. An assignment does not change your note, but the extension, payoff letter and default notices may come from someone else. Ask who services the loan and who decides on extensions before you sign.

What a New York short-term investor loan costs

ACRIS has no interest rate. The federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) loan-level file does, for lenders that report. We used the same proxy as our other state pages: conventional, first lien, 1-4 units, investment property, business purpose, no debt-to-income ratio and a term of 36 months or less. In New York City, one lender, Emporium TPO, reported 278 such loans with a 30-month term at a 7.375% median, which look like 30-year loans entered as 30, so the main column leaves out every 30-month loan.

Short-term business-purpose investor loans in 2025 HMDA data

Of the 753 New York City loans, 398 had a 12-month term, 39 an 18-month term and 12 a 24-month term; 544 were on 1-2 unit properties, and 388 had a borrower that was not a natural person. Twenty lenders reported at least one New York City short-term loan, led by Loan Funder (292 loans, 10.5% median on a $720,000 median loan) and ICE Lender Holdings (50, 10.87%). For comparison, the 30-year no-DTI rental loans that investors refinance into had a 7% median in New York City (3,200 loans). The rate is half of the quote: HMDA does not report points or fees on business-purpose loans, and the lenders in the city record that file no HMDA data are not in this table at all. Our hard money loan rates page has every state, and the hard money loan calculator turns points and term into a total cost.

New York usury: 16%, 25%, and the exits most investor loans use

New York's civil usury cap is low, 16%, but the statute leaves most private investor loans outside it.

New York interest-rate rules that apply to a hard money loan (statute text saved October 10, 2026)

Three consequences for a New York investor:

• An LLC borrower usually cannot use the 16% cap. Section 5-521 says “No corporation shall hereafter interpose the defense of usury in any action,” but keeps the criminal-usury defense (above 25%). 99.3% of the private mortgages in the city record had an entity borrower. Whether a court treats a given LLC as a corporation for this section is case law we did not read. The statute has one exception written for small investors: a corporation whose principal asset is a one or two family dwelling, organized or acquired within six months before it signed the note and mortgage.
• A one or two family house keeps the civil cap in play at any size up to $2.5 million. Section 5-501(6)(a) lifts the civil limit on loans of $250,000 or more “other than a loan or a forbearance secured primarily by an interest in real property improved by a one or two family residence.” On a three- or four-family building above $250,000, only criminal usury applies.
• The reported rates are far below the lines. No New York City short-term loan in the 2025 HMDA data had a note rate above 15%; statewide, 1 of 2,692 was above 16% (16.375%, on a $345,000 loan outside the city), and 74 were above 12%. Points count toward the rate, so a high-point, short-term loan is where to check. If the quote, points and default rate together approach 25%, stop and ask a New York lawyer.

Licensing follows the same consumer line. New York's mortgage banker license covers a “mortgage loan,” which Banking Law 590(1)(a) defines as “a loan to a natural person made primarily for personal, family or household use” secured by residential property. A loan to your LLC to flip or rent a house is outside that definition, which is why many of the lenders in the table are not licensed mortgage bankers and need not be. If you will live in the property, it is a consumer loan and the license, disclosure and foreclosure protections apply.

The mortgage recording tax: a New York cost most state guides skip

New York State and New York City tax the recording of every mortgage, and on an investor loan the borrower pays most of it. The rates add up from four provisions: the state basic tax of 50 cents per $100 (Tax Law 253(1)), the special additional tax of 25 cents, which on property with up to six dwelling units “shall ... be paid by the mortgagee” (253(1-a)(a)), the additional tax of 30 cents in the metropolitan commuter transportation district, which includes the city of New York, with the first $10,000 excepted on 1-2 family houses (253(2)(a)), and the city's own tax (253-a): $1 per $100 under $500,000, $1.125 on 1-3 family houses and residential condo units at $500,000 or more, and $1.75 on all other property at $500,000 or more.

Mortgage recording tax on a New York City private loan (our arithmetic from Tax Law 253 and 253-a)

On the median private loan, the borrower's share is $6,885 of city tax, $3,060 of state basic tax and $1,806 of additional tax on $602,000, about 1.9% of the loan, paid at closing (our arithmetic). A four-family building at $500,000 or more falls into the city's “all other real property” rate, so the same loan costs $3,855 more than on a two-family house. On a buy-rehab-refinance plan, the refinance is taxed again unless it is structured as a supplemental mortgage on the existing debt: Tax Law 255 taxes such an instrument only “on such new or further indebtedness or obligation.” Ask your title company early whether the hard money lender will assign its mortgage to the refinancing lender; many private lenders do not.

Foreclosure: what protects a business borrower in New York and what does not

New York forecloses through the courts. The protections people associate with New York's slow foreclosures are written for homeowners: the 90-day pre-foreclosure notice in RPAPL 1304 and the mandatory settlement conference in CPLR 3408 apply to a “home loan,” defined as a loan to a natural person, primarily for personal, family or household purposes, on a 1-4 family dwelling that is the borrower's principal dwelling. An LLC borrowing to flip or rent does not get either. What remains is the judicial process itself (RPAPL article 13; section 1301 bars a second action for the same debt without the court's leave) and, often, the personal guaranty you signed. We did not find an official statistic on how long a business-purpose foreclosure takes in New York City that we could save, so we give no number.

What a New York investor can do with this

1. Check the lender in ACRIS before you sign. Search the lender's name in ACRIS: a lender that says it is active in your borough should have recorded mortgages there. The data file lists 38 that did, with counts by year.
2. Ask who will hold the loan. Four in ten of the private mortgages already have an assignment out on record. Get in writing who services the loan, who approves extensions and where payoff requests go.
3. Price the whole loan. Use the 2025 New York City range (9.75% to 11% for the middle half) as a reference, add the points over the term, and add about 1.9% for the recording tax. A personal guaranty and a one-year balloon are normal; a high default rate is a term to negotiate.
4. Know which usury rules can apply. A one or two family house keeps the 16% civil line in play up to $2.5 million unless the borrower is a corporation; above $2.5 million nothing caps the rate. Above 25% is criminal for any loan under $2.5 million.
5. Plan the refinance. The 30-year New York City rental-loan median was 7% in 2025; the sooner the bridge is replaced, the less the 3.5-point gap costs. If you can, refinance with a lender that will take an assignment of the existing mortgage, so you pay recording tax only on new money.

For every loan type side by side, with the HMDA counts, see which investment property loan you can actually get.

FAQ

Property records: NYC ACRIS open data on data.cityofnewyork.us (Real Property Master bnx9-e6tj, Parties 636b-3b5g, Legals 8h5j-fqxa, Property Types 94g4-w6xz), mortgages and assignments recorded January 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026, downloaded October 10, 2026 by our scripts acris_pull.py and acris_ny.py (in the data folder), with the NYC Department of Finance recording page for coverage. Loan data: FFIEC/CFPB HMDA Data Browser, New York originated conventional loans for 2025 and the 2025 filer list, downloaded October 10, 2026 (script hmda_ny.py). Lender terms: Manhattan Bridge Capital Form 10-K for 2025 (SEC accession 0001493152-26-013241). HMDA coverage rules: 12 CFR 1003.3 and the Supplement I official interpretations (eCFR). Statutes: New York General Obligations Law 5-501, 5-511 and 5-521, Banking Law 14-a and 590, Penal Law 190.40, Tax Law 253, 253-a and 255, Public Authorities Law 1262, RPAPL 1301 and 1304 and CPLR 3408, text from newyork.public.law (which reproduces the Senate's official text) read October 10, 2026. Individual borrowers and lenders are never named. All counts, sums, medians, shares and tax figures are our arithmetic. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal, tax or lending advice, and not a loan offer.