Hard Money Loans Tennessee 2026: Rates, Lenders, Counties (HMDA)

What Tennessee investors signed in 2025: 1,741 loans, one median, two prices

The federal HMDA file lists every loan a reporting lender originates, with its note rate, amount, term, county and metro area. We downloaded the Tennessee originated conventional loans for 2024 and 2025 from the FFIEC Data Browser on October 26, 2026 and filtered them to the group used on our national hard money lenders and hard money loan rates pages. This page is about what Tennessee adds to the picture we already published for Arizona, Georgia and Ohio: who lends in each Tennessee county, how the bank end of the market prices, and which of Tennessee's own rules reach a flipper.

How we found the loans, and one lender we left out

HMDA has no “hard money” field, so the group is built from fields that exist, exactly as on the national page: originated (action taken 1), conventional, first lien, closed-end and not a reverse mortgage, investment property (occupancy 3) of 1 to 4 units, made primarily for a business or commercial purpose, with no debt-to-income ratio reported, and a term of 36 months or less. We did not download the nationwide file for this page; to check that our filter is the series filter, we ran it on the Georgia file and got the 2,911 short-term and 5,728 thirty-year-type loans that our Georgia page reports.

In Tennessee, 127,505 conventional loans were originated in 2025. Of those, 17,229 were on investment property and 11,481 of them were marked as made for a business purpose. After the remaining conditions, 6,997 loans are in the group: 3,625 with a term of 360 months or more (the rental, DSCR-type loans) and 1,810 with a term of 36 months or less. Of the 1,810, EMPORIUM TPO LLC filed 69, every one with a term of 30 and a 6.99% median rate. In 2024 the same filer's investment loans carried 360-month terms, as the national page explains, so these look like 30-year loans entered in years. We removed them, which leaves 1,741 loans, the same Tennessee count that appears on our national rates page. One other 30-month loan, from a credit union, stays in the group; it does not change a median.

What HMDA does not tell you

• Small lenders do not report. A closed-end loan is excluded if the lender made fewer than 25 closed-end mortgage loans in either of the two preceding calendar years (12 CFR 1003.3(c)(11)). In our Tennessee group 44 of 76 lenders filed fewer than 10 loans, and a local private fund is invisible.
• Some bridge loans are excluded. Regulation C lists temporary financing among the transactions that are not reported (12 CFR 1003.3(c)(3)).
• No points, no fees, no prepayment terms. The prepayment-penalty term is empty on all 1,741 loans and origination charges are reported on 18. A hard money quote is the note rate plus points, and HMDA shows the first half.
• 39 loans have no usable note rate. 38 are blank and one is zero, 34 of them from a single lender; every rate statistic below uses the other 1,702.
• No borrower name. HMDA does not identify the borrower, and neither does this page. It does show that 72.8% of the 2025 loans were to applicants for whom age, sex, race and ethnicity were all reported not applicable, which is a proxy for companies and trusts, not a count of them.

Tennessee short-term investor loans, 2024 vs 2025

Tennessee short-term (36 months or less) business-purpose investor loans in HMDA

Tennessee grew faster than the price fell. The count rose 28.6% and the dollars 49.9%, because the median loan went from $215,000 to $235,000 and the share of loans over $500,000 from 15.7% to 18.2% (our arithmetic). The median rate dropped half a point, to 10.0%, which is the national median for 2025 as well; Tennessee’s middle half is wider, from 8.5% to 10.99%, because the bank end of the market is large (see below). The premium over the 30-year-type median narrowed from 2.88 to 2.75 points. Concentration did not change: the top 10 lenders had 66.0% in 2024 and 65.9% in 2025. Our DSCR loan Ohio page covers the long-term exit in a neighboring market.

Banks make nearly a quarter of Tennessee’s short loans, at 7.5%

Banks are a minor lender in some of our other state pages (12.9% of Georgia’s short-term loans, 3.4% of Ohio’s). Tennessee has a different shape. Lenders with bank, credit-union or bancorp words in their names (a name heuristic, not a charter check) made 406 of the 1,741 loans, 23.3% (30.4% in 2024), and their median note rate was 7.5% against 10.5% for all other lenders. The 46 bank-named lenders in the file are mostly community banks. Our national rates page shows 19.9% for Tennessee because it classifies lenders with at least 10 loans by federal agency code; the name test used here also catches 101 loans by smaller bank-named lenders, so the two shares differ by method, not by data.

Largest bank-named lenders in the Tennessee short-term group, 2025 (names as filed with HMDA)

These are not like-for-like prices. Only 52.0% of the bank-named lenders’ loans had 12-month terms and 20.7% had 36-month terms, against 72.4% 12-month terms for the whole state, so a bank loan is more often a three-year balloon to a customer it already knows. The bank end is still a reason to ask a Tennessee community bank for a quote before signing a 10.5% note: the non-bank middle half ran from 9.95% to 11.2% (our arithmetic), and the gap to the banks was 3.0 points. Remember what the filter keeps: first-lien investment-property loans reported without a debt-to-income ratio, not every loan a bank makes to an investor.

Who made the loans: Tennessee lenders in the 2025 HMDA file

Top 12 short-term investor lenders in Tennessee by 2025 loans (names as filed with HMDA)

The ranking looks like the national one at the top (Kiavi made 29.9% here and 29.5% of the national 66,029) and differs after that. Rain City Capital, which did not appear among the top lenders of our 2024 Tennessee file, is second with 129 loans, and 34 of them have no note rate, so its median rests on 95 loans. ABL RPC’s 117 loans carried 16.5% of the state’s dollars ($121,105,000), and it made 94 of the 316 loans over $500,000 in the state (29.7%); its 2024 record was 71 loans at a 13.125% median, so its rate fell 1.76 points while its count rose 65%. Temple View Capital Funding (36 loans, $915,000 median) and CV3 Financial Services (52, $385,000) also lend large. The loan-size column is what to compare before the rate column: a $915,000 loan and a $195,000 loan are not the same product. Kiavi is a referral partner of this site, and its place in the table is its count; see our Kiavi review, Easy Street review and Rain City Capital review.

Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga: three markets, not one

Largest Tennessee counties for short-term investor loans, 2025 (the county is blank for 180 loans)

Seventy-eight Tennessee counties had at least one short-term loan in 2025 (69 in 2024), but Davidson, Shelby, Knox and Hamilton alone hold 829 of the 1,741 loans (47.6%), and another 180 have no county in the file (our arithmetic). The pattern is about lenders and size, not about geography alone:

• Memphis is Kiavi’s market. In Shelby County, Kiavi Funding made 105 of 183 loans (57.4%), and the county median loan is $135,000, the smallest of the big four. Shelby fell from 226 loans in 2024 to 183 in 2025 (down 19.0%) while its median rate fell from 10.7% to 10.25%.
• Nashville is a large-loan market. Davidson County went from 219 to 290 loans (up 32.4%) and from a $425,000 to a $545,000 median loan. ABL RPC made 57 of the 290; without those, the county median loan is $415,000 and the median rate 9.95% (our arithmetic). The Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin metro area made 510 loans, 29.3% of the state, at a 9.9% median.
• Knoxville and Chattanooga are Kiavi counties too. Kiavi made 95 of Knox County’s 180 loans and 117 of Hamilton County’s 176; with Shelby, those three counties hold 317 of Kiavi’s 521 Tennessee loans (60.8%). Both counties’ medians are 10.49%, which is Kiavi’s own median.
• Sevier County is a price outlier. Its 53 loans had an 11.625% median rate and a $705,000 median loan. ABL RPC made 25 of them; the other 28 had a 10.45% median and a $465,000 median loan (our arithmetic), so most of the county’s premium is who lent and how much, not the county. It was 12.875% in 2024.
• Banks dominate Sumner County. Bank-named lenders made 41 of Sumner County’s 59 loans (The Farmers Bank alone made 25), which is why its median rate is 8.0%, the lowest of the large counties; in Davidson they made 44 of 290.

Largest metro areas for Tennessee short-term investor loans, 2025 (Census Bureau 2023 delineation names)

More than one loan in five (22.2%) is outside any metro area, so a Tennessee flipper in a small town is not an exception; that group's median rate is 10.0% and its median loan $215,000.

Tennessee’s own rate ceiling: the TDFI formula rate against 2025 prices

Tennessee publishes a rate benchmark that moves every week: its Commissioner of Financial Institutions announces every week a “maximum effective formula rate of interest,” which TDFI describes as a ceiling of 4 percent over the weekly average prime loan rate. The announcement of October 20, 2026 reads that the rate “is 11.00 percent per annum,” based on a prime rate of 7.00 percent published on October 19, 2026. TDFI’s separate monthly announcement for home loans, set under Public Chapter 290 of 2025, is 11.37 percent for November 2026, four points over an average prime offer rate of 7.37 percent.

Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions rate announcements and our count of 2025 loans above them

Read the counts carefully. HMDA gives the year but not the day, so a 2025 loan above 11.5% was above the formula rate in every week of 2025, while one between 10.75% and 11.5% was above it only if it closed in a week when the rate was lower. And this is a comparison, not a finding. We could not open an official or free copy of Tennessee Code Title 47, Chapters 14 and 15, which sets the formula rate, its exemptions and any treatment of business-purpose or large loans: the free state-code sites we tried returned an access error, and we did not work around it. So whether the formula rate or the home-loan rate limits an investor loan to a company is not verified here, and we do not sort any loan in the file into compliant or not. What the TDFI pages do establish is the benchmark Tennessee publishes. A borrower who is quoted 12% or more (147 of the 1,702 loans, 8.6%, in 2025) should ask the lender in writing which Tennessee provision it relies on, and a Tennessee attorney can answer that for a specific loan.

Does a Tennessee hard money lender need a license?

TDFI states the rule on its mortgage company page. Tennessee Code Annotated 45-13-201(a) “provides that, no person shall act as a mortgage lender, mortgage loan broker or mortgage loan servicer in this state without first obtaining a license under the Tennessee Residential Lending, Brokerage and Servicing Act.” A mortgage lender, under 45-13-105(14) as quoted by TDFI, is a person “who makes a residential mortgage loan or holds the person out as able to make” one. Applications run through the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System.

What the page does not tell us is how the Act defines a “residential mortgage loan,” and so whether a loan to a company on a rental or flip property falls inside it; we could not open the definition (see the note on the code sites above), and that is not verified. The practical check is free: search the lender at NMLS Consumer Access and ask which Tennessee basis it relies on, a license or an exemption. Compare it with the pattern in the file, where 72.8% of the loans were to applicants reported as not natural persons; that is a fact about the borrowers, not a conclusion about any lender’s status.

Foreclosure: 20 days from the first ad, two ads and an online posting

Public Chapter 515 of 2025 (House Bill 1127) replaced Tennessee Code Annotated 35-5-101 and took effect on July 1, 2025. We read the enrolled text; the official Secretary of State copy returned an access error, so the copy we saved is one hosted at tenaco.com, and it is worth checking against the current code.

Tennessee foreclosure advertisement and notice, as amended by Public Chapter 515 (2025)

For a lender, the shortest path from a mailed notice to a sale is 20 days: with the notice mailed and the first ad run on December 11, 2026, the earliest sale date is December 31, 2026 (our arithmetic). That is a floor, not a forecast. The enrolled text we read says nothing about the day of the week, the place of sale or a deficiency claim, and we did not verify the rest of Tennessee’s foreclosure and redemption rules, so a guarantor of a flip loan should ask an attorney how a shortfall would be pursued. We also did not verify the 20-day period against a second source.

Two Tennessee taxes a flipper pays on the same deal

The Tennessee Department of Revenue’s recordation tax manual (March 2023 edition, the one we could open) describes two taxes under Tennessee Code Annotated 67-4-409. The realty transfer tax is “$0.37 per $100” on recording documents that evidence a transfer of realty, “generally based on the greater of consideration paid or the value of the property,” and the manual says the grantee or transferee pays it. The indebtedness tax is “equivalent to 11.5 on each $100 of the indebtedness” and “does not apply with respect to the first $2,000,” and the mortgagor, grantor or debtor pays it, with the holder of the debt collecting and remitting it. The manual is dated March 2023, so check the current rates with the Department or the county register of deeds before relying on the numbers.

For a flipper, that means the purchase and the loan each carry a Tennessee tax at closing. A buy-and-hold borrower pays one more indebtedness tax when it refinances into a long-term loan.

What the Tennessee numbers add to a 6-month flip

We apply the rules to the median loan: $235,000 for 6 months, interest-only, at the 10.0% median rate. The 2 points are our assumption, not an HMDA figure; HMDA does not report points on these loans. The $345,000 purchase price is the median property value in the Tennessee group, used here as a stand-in.

A $235,000 Tennessee flip loan for 6 months at 10.0%: what the numbers add up to (our arithmetic)

The two taxes together add $1,544.45 to the closing of this example, against $4,700 for 2 points (our arithmetic), and the bank-versus-non-bank gap matters more: at the bank median of 7.5% the six months of interest would be $8,812.50, which is $2,937.50 less than at 10.0%. Use our hard money loan calculator and fix-and-flip calculator for your own numbers.

What a Tennessee investor can do with this

1. Place any quote on the distribution. At or below 8.5% a note was in the cheapest quarter of Tennessee short-term loans in 2025; at or above 10.99% it was in the costliest. On the median loan that is $1,664.58 against $2,152.21 a month of interest. Use 2025 as a range, not a target.
2. Ask a community bank first. The state's bank-named lenders priced at a 7.5% median on 406 loans, with longer terms; the non-bank median was 10.5%. Compare total cost, points, extension fees and term.
3. Compare size before rate. A lender whose median loan is $785,000 or $915,000 and one whose median is $195,000 are different products. Find the lenders on the table whose median loan matches yours.
4. Ask which Tennessee rule the lender relies on. If a quote is above the TDFI formula rate, ask in writing which provision applies and which licence or exemption the lender holds; the answer is for an attorney, not for this page.
5. Budget the two recordation taxes. About $267.95 on the median loan and $1,276.50 on a $345,000 purchase, using the 2023 manual rates.
6. Read the default clause and the guaranty. Under the new advertisement rule the earliest sale is 20 days after the first ad and the notice, and the contract may add more. Our BRRRR method page explains why the bridge should be as short as the rehab allows.
7. If you wholesale first, read the assignment rule. Tennessee requires disclosure and three business days’ notice before an assignment; our wholesaling laws by state page has the text.

Kiavi pays us a referral fee when a loan closes through its button in the box below. The HMDA figures above are the same either way, and Kiavi’s own Tennessee record (521 loans, 10.49% median) is in the lender table. Visio Lending and Lima One Capital, also in the box, do not pay us; Lima One appears in the lender table with its own record.

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

FAQ

Loan-level data: FFIEC/CFPB HMDA Data Browser, Tennessee originated conventional loans for 2024 and 2025, downloaded October 26, 2026 (request URLs in the data file; our scripts hm_tn.py and build.py and their output are in the data folder); filter checked against the Georgia file; lender names from the FFIEC 2025 and 2024 filer lists and, for one lender missing from them, the GLEIF register; county names from the Census Bureau 2020 county list; metro names from the Census Bureau 2023 delineation file. Rates and benchmarks: Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions, Announcement of Maximum Effective Formula Rate of Interest (October 20, 2026), Historical Listing of Formula Rates, Announcement of Maximum Effective Rate of Interest on Home Loans and its historical listing, and Mortgage Company page (Tenn. Code Ann. 45-13-201(a), 45-13-105(14)), all read October 26, 2026. Foreclosure: Public Chapter 515 (House Bill 1127), 2025, enrolled text, copy hosted at tenaco.com. Taxes: Tennessee Department of Revenue, Recordation Tax Manual, March 2023. Coverage rules from 12 CFR 1003.3 (eCFR). Tennessee Code Title 47 and Title 35 text could not be opened and is not relied on. All counts, shares, medians and changes are our arithmetic. This is analysis of public records, not legal, lending or tax advice.