American Heritage Lending Review 2026: HMDA Rates, Maryland, CFPB

Who American Heritage Lending is

AHL lends to real estate investors: DSCR rental loans, fix-and-flip, bridge and ground-up construction loans, plus a wholesale and correspondent channel for brokers (ahlend.com and ahlendtpo.com). Its site calls it a direct lender and says that in its wholesale channel “the broker’s clients stay with the broker.” This page covers the lender as it appears in public records; it is not an endorsement and we have no commercial relationship with it.

The ownership point deserves a line of its own. Ellington Financial, a listed mortgage REIT, wrote in its 10-Q for September 30, 2024 that it benefited from “mark-to-market gains on our equity investments in the loan originators LendSure and American Heritage Lending.” That is the only SEC filing we found that names AHL. Ellington's 10-K for 2025 groups its other originators into one line of $25.6 million and does not name AHL, so we cannot say whether the 2024 stake still exists or how large it was. Our LendSure review covers the one originator Ellington does name and controls.

What AHL advertises

From AHL's program pages, read October 21, 2026. These are the lender's claims, not verified terms.

For rental loans AHL does not publish rates, but it does publish how prepayment penalties work. A March 16, 2026 explainer on its site says most DSCR loans let you prepay up to 20% of the original principal each year without penalty, lists a 5% flat structure, a 5-4-3-3-3 structure with a 3% floor and a 5-4-3-2-1 step-down (which it says “is not available from all lenders”), and says shorter prepayment terms typically cost “0.25% to 0.50% higher” in rate than the five-year option. It does not say which structure its own loans use. Our guide to refinancing a DSCR loan shows what a penalty costs at each payoff date.

What its HMDA filing shows

HMDA requires most mortgage lenders to report every application they decide, with the note rate, loan amount, occupancy, loan term and whether the loan was for a business purpose. We downloaded AHL's loan-level records for 2023, 2024 and 2025 from the FFIEC HMDA Data Browser by its legal entity identifier. HMDA has no DSCR or bridge field, so we use the same definitions as our DSCR lender ranking: an originated, first-lien, investment-property, business-purpose loan on 1 to 4 units with no debt-to-income ratio is DSCR-type when its term is 30 or 40 years and short-term when its term is 36 months or less.

DSCR-type volume grew 21.7% in 2025 (our arithmetic) and the median rate fell 1.375 points from 2023 (our arithmetic), in line with the market. The 2025 DSCR-type loans split into 2,669 thirty-year loans (median 7.375%) and 348 forty-year interest-only loans (median 7.25%); 51.1% were cash-out refinances, 30.2% purchases and 11.5% interest-only. They covered 48 states, led by Florida (380 loans, 7.25% median), Texas (258, 7.25%), New York (221, 7.5%), Ohio (220, 7.75%) and Pennsylvania (148, 7.625%). Nationwide, 152,049 loans met the DSCR-type definition in 2025, so AHL's 3,017 is about 2.0% (our arithmetic); it ranks 16th by count. Our state pages carry the detail for Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Michigan.

HMDA also shows what it leaves out. For all 3,017 DSCR-type and all 505 short-term loans in 2025, the fields for total loan costs, points and fees, origination charges, discount points and prepayment penalty term are blank. The note rate is only half of the price, and points, the prepayment structure and the lender's draw terms are in your term sheet, not in the federal data.

The short-term rate gap: 7.99% advertised, 13% median filed

This is the finding no other AHL page shows. AHL's flip page says rates start at 7.99%. Its 2025 filing shows 505 short-term loans, 502 of them 12-month, every one interest-only, with a lowest rate of 9.75% and a highest of 14.5%. Only one loan was at or below 9.99%.

Three things help read it. First, the rates form two clusters rather than a spread: 248 loans at a 10.75% median and 257 at 13.75%, with 92 loans at exactly 14.25%. Second, Texas explains part of the shift: 146 of the 505 loans were in Texas (37 in 2024, when the Texas median was 10.999%), and without Texas the 2025 median is 11.25%, still 0.8 points above Kiavi's (our arithmetic). Third, AHL advertises a “0 Point Program”; a loan with no points would be expected to carry a higher rate. HMDA records no points on these loans, so we cannot tell which loans were 0-point, and the 7.99% figure may apply to borrowers or deal types that are rare in this file. What the data does show is that no flip-type borrower in AHL's filing paid a rate near 7.99%.

Worked example (our arithmetic): on the 2025 median short-term loan of $245,000, interest-only for 12 months, a 13% rate costs $31,850 in interest and Kiavi's 10.45% median would cost $25,602.50, a difference of $6,247.50 before any points. On a $400,000 loan the gap is $10,200 (13% is $52,000, 10.45% is $41,800). A borrower who is quoted 0 points at 13% needs to compare that with 2 points at 10.75%: on $245,000 for 12 months, two points are $4,900 and the rate gap to 13% saves $5,512.50, so the two quotes land within about $600 of each other (our arithmetic).

The other 2025 detail: short-term purchase loans (370) had a median of 11.75%, and refinances without cash-out (120) 13.75%. The size is larger than in earlier years ($245,000 against $185,000 in 2024), and 502 of 505 had 12-month terms.

How its rates compare with Kiavi

Same definitions, same year. Kiavi is the benchmark because it is the largest short-term lender in the HMDA file and a top-five DSCR-type lender.

On 30-year rentals AHL's median sat 0.125 points above Kiavi's, which is $218.75 a year in interest on a $175,000 loan (our arithmetic). The rental books are not identical: 51.1% of AHL's DSCR-type loans are cash-out refinances, and a third are 40-year interest-only. For live market rates, see our DSCR loan rates page and hard money loan rates; for the lender field, see hard money lenders 2026, where AHL appears as the 21st-largest short-term lender.

The Maryland story: what happened and what did not

The headline is real, and the part that matters is what sits under it.

So the halt concerned consumer loans and the reason AHL gave was loan buyers, not AHL's own licence. The regulator's rescission says the new law “exempts two categories of trusts” and adds that commercial lenders making loans exclusively for business purposes “are not subject to OFR's licensing requirements” under the mortgage lending and installment provisions. We could not find a notice saying when AHL restarted consumer locks in Maryland, and we do not claim it did. AHL's licensing page lists a Maryland mortgage lender licence under 93735, and its site has a Maryland DSCR page.

What HMDA shows for Maryland: consumer-purpose loans were 9 in 2023, 9 in 2024 and 9 in 2025. Business-purpose loans fell from 120 to 114 to 82, a 28.1% drop in 2025 while AHL's business-purpose loans overall rose 22.2% (our arithmetic); DSCR-type loans in Maryland went from 101 to 78. HMDA has no month field and gives no reason, so we draw no conclusion from the business-purpose dip. For Maryland borrowers, our Maryland hard money page covers the state's interest and licensing rules.

Who ends up holding your loan

HMDA records who bought each loan in the year it closed. Of AHL's 4,494 loans in 2025, 4,480 (99.7%) went to a “credit union, mortgage company, or finance company”, 14 to a life insurance company, and none was left unsold at year end. In 2023 it was 2,714 of 2,719. AHL is therefore an originator that sells, not a balance-sheet lender, and HMDA does not say who the buyers are. Ellington's 10-K says generally that in connection with its originator investments it “may enter into flow agreements” to buy loans from them; it does not say that it bought AHL's. For you, the practical question is who will service the loan, who approves draws on a rehab loan and who you call about a payoff, none of which the filing answers.

The 2025 filing codes all 4,494 loans as submitted directly to AHL, even though AHL says it has a broker and correspondent channel, so HMDA's channel field cannot show how much of its volume is broker business.

Consumer lending and owner-occupied loans

AHL's website says it serves commercial and investment mortgages, but the filing shows a consumer line too: 640 consumer-purpose loans in 2025 ($353.7 million, median 7.5%), 592 of them owner-occupied. That includes 111 short-term, cash-out loans on owner-occupied homes in 25 states at a 9% median and a $405,000 median loan (41 such loans in 2024, 39 of them consumer-purpose), the group our bridge loan page lists. If you are a homeowner and not an investor, the numbers in this section are the ones that apply to you; the 13% investor median does not.

Complaints and records

The CFPB does not verify complaints, and business-purpose borrowers rarely file there, so 15 is a floor and mostly reflects AHL's consumer loans. None of the 15 came from Maryland.

What a borrower or broker can do with this

• Compare rate and points together. If AHL quotes you a flip loan, ask for the same deal as a 0-point quote and as a points quote, and put another lender's quote next to it on the same day. In 2025 its short-term borrowers paid 10.75% to 13.75% in the middle half, so the 7.99% start rate is the best case, not the typical case.
• Ask for the prepayment structure in writing. HMDA records none, and AHL's own explainer lists three structures and says the step-down is not offered by all lenders. Get the percentage by year and the free-prepayment threshold in the term sheet. Our DSCR refinance guide shows what each costs at payoff.
• Ask who owns the lender and who buys the loan. Its site gives two different, unnamed descriptions of its backer, and 99.7% of its loans were sold within the year. Ask for the servicer's name and the draw process before closing.
• Texas investors should check the rate band. The 14.25% median on 146 Texas short-term loans is the highest median among Texas lenders with 100 or more short-term loans on our Texas page; see Texas hard money loans.
• Maryland borrowers: business-purpose loans were not the subject of the 2025 guidance. If you are a consumer borrower, ask whether the lender can fund in Maryland today.
• Brokers: use the 2025 bands above as the pricing floor and ceiling you will see, and check the lender with our DSCR lender legitimacy check.

FAQ

Sources, read October 21, 2026: American Heritage Lending's HMDA loan-level records for 2023, 2024 and 2025 (FFIEC HMDA Data Browser, LEI 549300ZPSJZO10ZAX556) and Kiavi Funding's 2025 records (LEI 5493006VAGP3GQ8FJT49); the FFIEC public LAR field definitions; our nationwide 2025 DSCR-type count from the FFIEC HMDA data; ahlend.com program, licensing, About, Brokers, contact and prepayment pages; the GLEIF LEI record; the Maryland Office of Financial Regulation industry advisories of January 10, 2025 and May 29, 2025; National Mortgage Professional's January 31, 2025 report (Internet Archive copy); Ellington Financial's Form 10-Q for September 30, 2024 (accession 0001411342-24-000113) and Form 10-K for 2025 (0001628280-26-013279); and the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database. NMLS Consumer Access, the BBB and Yelp could not be read. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.