American Financial Network (AFN) DSCR Review 2026: 1,389 Loans

Who American Financial Network is, and what it says it offers

American Financial Network is a California corporation created June 14, 2001, with its headquarters at 10 Pointe Drive, Suite 330, in Brea, California. It is a mortgage company that lends mostly to people buying or refinancing their own homes: FHA, VA, USDA and conventional loans. This page looks at the investor side, which the federal loan record lets us measure.

The company's own site says AFN is “Licensed Nationwide” and shows a customer rating based on 110,407 borrowers; we did not test either claim, and neither tells you about its DSCR product. What is public and checkable is the federal loan record, which is the rest of this page.

What the 2025 HMDA data show

Lenders above a size threshold report every mortgage application and loan under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). We downloaded AFN's complete file for 2025 from the FFIEC data browser and checked its counts against the FFIEC aggregations service.

AFN is a home lender first. Of 13,125 originations, 11,094 (84.5%) were on a principal residence (median loan $315,000, median rate 6.625%), 195 on second homes and 1,836 (14.0%) on investment properties. By product, 6,535 loans were conventional (49.8%), 5,106 FHA (38.9%), 1,331 VA (10.1%) and 153 USDA (1.2%). Of the 1,836 investment loans, 1,390 were made for a business purpose ($474,460,000, median loan $265,000, median rate 7.25%) and 446 were not; the second group is rental property bought by borrowers who qualified on personal income. The DSCR-type loans are 75.7% of the investment loans and 70.9% of their dollars (our arithmetic).

The DSCR-type book

HMDA has no DSCR field. We use the definition of our DSCR lenders ranked by loans page, unchanged: conventional, first lien, closed-end, one-to-four units, investment property, business purpose, no debt-to-income ratio reported and a term of 360 months or more. Run on AFN's file it returns 1,389 originated loans, 357 denials, a 7.25% median rate, 20.4% denied and 11.7% interest-only, the same as the AFN row in that ranking. The business-purpose group in the raw file is slightly larger (1,390 originated, 1,057 withdrawn, 359 denied, 30 closed incomplete): eight records fail the DSCR-type filter, namely one 180-month loan, four withdrawn applications (two second liens and two on properties of five or more units), two denied second-lien applications and one incomplete file on a property of five or more units.

AFN's median rate is an eighth of a point under the national one and its loans are 17.8% larger (our arithmetic). Half of its loans are purchases and only 6.6% are refinances without cash out, and it never went above 80.0% combined loan-to-value in the file: 209 loans sit exactly at 80.0% and none above. The same rate (7.25%) is the median for purchases, cash-outs, refinances, interest-only and amortizing loans alike. 1,326 loans are 30-year and 63 are 40-year, 22 of which are interest-only.

Against the lenders ranked around it

On price AFN sits in the middle of this group. Its denied share is the highest of the five, which says more about who applies than about quality (see denials below). For the neighbours we cover, see Arc Home and Dominion Financial Services. A wholesale lender with a similar profile is reviewed in Nexera Holding.

Loan size: the middle of the book is $150,000 to $500,000

The smallest loan is $95,000 and the largest $2,505,000; the median is $265,000 and the median property value $385,000. Only 205 loans (14.8%) are under $150,000, so AFN is not a small-balance lender: the small-loan lenders that dominate the count, such as Kiavi (median loan $155,000), sit in a different part of the market. Within AFN's book the median rate falls as the loan grows, from 7.375% in the $100,000 band to 7.125% in the $1 million band, which is the usual shape.

Rate rises with leverage by half a point from the lowest to the highest band. On the median loan of $265,000 for 30 years (our arithmetic), principal and interest is $1,807.77 a month at 7.25%, $1,696.82 at the 10th-percentile rate of 6.625% and $1,990.86 at the 90th-percentile rate of 8.25%, a spread of $294.04 a month between the two ends. At 7.25% the 360 payments add $385,796 of interest. The same loan interest-only at 7.25% costs $1,601.04, $206.73 less, with the balance untouched. These are arithmetic on medians, not quotes, and exclude points, fees and any prepayment charge.

Where AFN makes DSCR loans

AFN made DSCR-type loans in 43 states and 343 counties. Florida, New York, California and Texas hold 750 of the 1,389 loans, 54.0% (our arithmetic).

AFN's pricing follows the market in the four big states, with the same median as all lenders in each. Its share of a state's loans is highest in Virginia (75 of 3,083, 2.4%) and New York (224 of 9,885, 2.3%). Where AFN prices above the state, Pennsylvania (7.875% against 7.5%) is the widest gap, and the volume there is only 46 loans. Louisiana is the outlier on the denial side: 23 denied and 12 originated, a small sample against a state where all lenders denied 26.6% of decided applications (see our denied-applications study). For state requirements and lenders see New York, Virginia, Florida, Texas and California.

Applications and denials

AFN decided 1,746 DSCR-type files (1,389 originated, 357 denied). That is not the whole funnel: of 2,873 DSCR-type applications in 2025, 48.3% ended as a loan, 36.7% were withdrawn by the applicant (1,053), 12.4% were denied, and 74 were approved but not accepted or closed incomplete (our arithmetic). Across all its products the denied share of decided files was 15.7% (2,436 of 15,561).

“Other” is the answer for nearly half, which HMDA does not break down; on the national file it is about one in five. No AFN denial lists debt-to-income, which fits the definition (no ratio is reported on these loans) and not necessarily the underwriting. Denials fall unevenly:

A denial rate of 20.4% is below the 23.2% national rate and down from 33.9% in 2023, but it counts decided files only. Another 1,053 applicants walked away, and HMDA does not say why. For how the reasons vary by lender and state, see the denied-applications study.

Who buys the loans: all of them are sold

HMDA records the type of institution that bought a loan within the calendar year. For AFN's DSCR-type loans the “not sold” code appears on none of the 1,389.

AFN originates to sell, in this line and in the rest of its book (96.2% of all 13,125 originations were sold within the year, our arithmetic). The buyers' names are not in HMDA, so we cannot say whose underwriting guide a DSCR borrower ends up under. In practice the lender who closes does not hold the loan for long, so ask who will service it. Private securitizers took 29.8% of the loans in 2025, 21.3% in 2024 and 44.4% in 2023, so the mix moves from year to year.

On channel, 267 loans (19.2%) were submitted directly to AFN and 1,122 (80.8%) came through brokers or other third parties, against 37.2% direct nationally. The direct share was 0% in 2023 and 8.8% in 2024, so AFN is building a direct line, but the broker is the way in for most borrowers: 95.5% of its New York DSCR-type loans and 88.2% of its Arizona ones came through a third party (matching the state pages that show them). Ask a broker which lender will be on your note, and what the broker is paid, which HMDA does not show.

Three years: volume tripled, the median rate fell 1.25 points

DSCR-type loans tripled from 459 to 1,389 (our arithmetic) while all originations grew 16% (11,348 to 13,125), and the median note rate fell 1.25 points from 2023. The interest-only share fell by 8.3 points, so a borrower today is much less likely to see interest-only than in 2023. Treat this as a trend in reported data, not a like-for-like series: the three files are the FFIEC one-year downloads and a lender can change how it reports.

Complaints: 259 in the CFPB database, none a business loan

On November 3, 2026 the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database returned 259 complaints for the company name “American Financial Network Inc.” (the database's spelling), the earliest received August 30, 2012 and the latest October 27, 2026. A control search for another lender worked (Rocket Mortgage returned 9,731). AFN has no complaints we could tie to a business-purpose loan: the database collects complaints on consumer financial products, and Regulation Z exempts “An extension of credit primarily for a business, commercial or agricultural purpose” (12 CFR 1026.3(a)(1)). These complaints describe the home-loan side, which is 84.5% of its volume.

The remaining complaints in each row are on other products (debt collection, credit cards, money transfer, a vehicle loan, a bank account and one unclassified service; nine in all).

By issue the most frequent are closing on a mortgage (67), applying for or refinancing a mortgage (63), trouble during the payment process (51), incorrect information on a credit report (16) and struggling to pay the mortgage (13). By product: 81 conventional home mortgages, 75 FHA, 40 VA and 14 “other type of mortgage”. The largest states are California (43), Florida (40), Connecticut (22), Texas (21) and Virginia (17). Companies answered 237 with an explanation, 17 with monetary relief (all received between 2013 and 2019), 3 with non-monetary relief, and 19 were marked not timely. In 2025 there were 39 complaints for 13,125 loans originated, about 3.0 per 1,000 (1.9 per 1,000 counting only the 25 on mortgages), our arithmetic; the 12 credit-reporting complaints that year may involve other services than origination.

We did not read complaint narratives (the records we pulled carry none), review sites, state regulator records or court dockets, so this page makes no statement about them. Two things limit the figure: the database counts what consumers file, and it excludes the DSCR borrowers who are legally outside it.

What HMDA does not show

• No pricing beyond the note rate. Discount points, origination charges, lender credits and total loan costs are blank on all 1,389 DSCR-type loans, as is the rate spread. Regulation C asks for them only for covered loans subject to Regulation Z (12 CFR 1003.4(a)(17) to (20)), and business-purpose loans are not.
• No prepayment penalty. The field prepayment_penalty_term reads NA for all 1,389. Regulation C asks for it “For covered loans or applications subject to Regulation Z”, and Regulation Z exempts business-purpose credit, so the data cannot say whether AFN's loans carry a 5-year, 3-year or no penalty. Ask for the schedule in writing before you pay for an appraisal.
• No DSCR ratio and no credit score. HMDA has no debt-service-coverage field, so the DSCR-type label is our proxy; the credit-score fields give the scoring model, not the score. We cannot tell the minimum ratio, the required reserves or the minimum score.
• No terms from the company. AFN's website lists DSCR as one non-QM option and publishes no rate sheet, so there is no AFN statement to compare with the data.
• No buyers' names, no broker pay and no 2026 data. The 2026 file appears in 2027.

What a reader can do with this

• Use the numbers as a cross-check, not a quote. A 30-year rental quote at 7.25% on a $265,000 loan at 70% leverage was AFN's 2025 median; one at 8.25% or more was in its top tenth of loans.
• Ask who the lender on the note will be, and who will service it. 80.8% of DSCR-type loans came through someone else, and every one was sold.
• Ask about the prepayment penalty, points, the lock period and the interest-only period in writing. None is in the public data.
• If you want a refinance, expect more scrutiny. AFN denied 36.6% of other refinances and 23.8% of cash-outs against 14.5% of purchases.
• Get a second quote the same day from a direct lender. See Kiavi, Visio Lending and Lima One, and our guides is this DSCR lender legit? and DSCR loan rates 2026.

Kiavi pays us a referral fee through its PartnerStack program when a borrower we send closes a loan, and its button above is marked as an affiliate link; we have no such relationship with American Financial Network.

FAQ

Sources, read November 3, 2026: FFIEC HMDA Data Browser loan-level files for LEI 5493008NWHQT1R22C024 for 2023, 2024 and 2025 and the FFIEC aggregations API (our scripts and the files are in sources/); the FFIEC 2025 filer list and LAR data-field definitions; our ranking of 466 lenders for the national benchmarks (nationwide 2025 file of originated and denied applications, same definition); the GLEIF record for the LEI; the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database search API; the company's website (afncorp.com home, loan options, licensing and reviews pages); 12 CFR 1003.4 and 12 CFR 1026.3 on eCFR. Sums, shares, medians and rankings are our arithmetic from those files.