Equidy Review: California Hard Money Lender, License and Fund

Why this review exists

People search “equidy reviews” and find a company website, a handful of directory listings and a 2015 startup profile that calls it a peer-to-peer lender. None of those says what the company legally is today. We looked for the primary records: the state license, the federal mortgage-lending dataset, the consumer complaint database and the SEC. Where a record could not be reached, we say so in Section 8 instead of filling the gap. We have no affiliate relationship with Equidy. For the wider California picture, see our list of hard money lenders in California and, for another California lender that also sells fund interests, our Center Street Lending review.

1. What Equidy says it is

Everything in this section is the company's own claim, read on equidy.com on November 9, 2026.

The “since 1975” line. The About page refers to “the purchase of Superior by Equidy” (an older private-money lender, Superior Home Loans) in 2014, and the fund's website says Superior Home Loans and a trustee business began serving California in 1975 and were acquired in 2014. The DRE record shows Equidy, Inc. itself was licensed in 2013 and used “Superior Home Loans” as a business name from April 11, 2014 to April 11, 2023. So the 1975 date belongs to the businesses it bought, not to Equidy, Inc.

2. The license record: what the Department of Real Estate shows

The DRE public lookup for license 01933832 (read November 8, 2026, 11:03 PM per the page) shows the following.

Two limits. The DRE page itself warns that discipline information “may have been removed from a licensee's record” under Business and Professions Code section 10083.2(c), and that it may be available on request from the Department. And a DRE broker license is not the same as a lender license from the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) under the California Financing Law; we could not reach the DFPI search to check whether Equidy holds one or relies on its broker license for the loans it makes. Ask the company which license each loan is made under.

A mortgage loan originator endorsement on a DRE license is tied to an NMLS record. We read the number from the DRE page, not from NMLS Consumer Access, which blocked our request, so the NMLS license list and any NMLS-recorded actions were not seen.

3. What it publishes about loan terms

The only terms we found are on a fix-and-flip page of equidy.com dated August 3, 2024. The home page does not repeat them, so treat them as possibly out of date.

What a starting rate means in dollars (our arithmetic). At 9.99% interest-only, a $1,000,000 loan costs $99,900 a year, or $8,325 a month, before points, draw fees and any default or extension charges. That is the best case implied by “starting at”; your quoted rate may be higher. The page does not say whether the rate is fixed.

4. HMDA: Equidy does not report

The federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act dataset is the usual way to count a lender's loans. We downloaded the FFIEC list of institutions that reported for each year on November 9, 2026 and searched it for Equidy, Superior Home Loans, Robil, Centrality and Central Mortgage Income.

So there is no 2024 versus 2025 loan count, dollar volume or denial rate to report. That is not a finding of wrongdoing: HMDA covers mortgage lenders above certain size and activity thresholds, and loans for business purposes are generally outside it. It does mean we cannot confirm any of Equidy's volume claims, and its three published loan stories ($895,000 in Orinda, $280,000 in Victorville, $460,000 in Yucaipa) stay unverified claims. For lenders that do report, see our HMDA-based pages such as dscr loans in California.

5. Complaints, regulators and courts

• CFPB: a free-text search of the public complaint database for “equidy” returned 0 results on November 9, 2026. A search with zero results does not prove there are no complaints elsewhere (BBB, state regulators, court files); the CFPB database only covers consumer-financial products and companies named by the complainant.
• DFPI: the DFPI pages returned an access error. A web search found no DFPI action naming Equidy, Inc., but that is not a search of the DFPI's own enforcement list.
• Courts: CourtListener required a login, and California state court indexes are not searchable by outside tools. We checked no docket and report no cases; we do not claim there are none.
• SEC: Equidy itself has no SEC filings under its name. An EDGAR full-text search for the phrase returned only two unrelated 2003 and 2004 Lehman ABS exhibits. The SEC filings are those of the partner fund in Section 6.

6. The partner fund: Central Mortgage Income Fund, LLC

The pages we read do not say whose money funds Equidy's loans. A separate vehicle, Central Mortgage Income Fund, LLC, sells fund interests to accredited investors. We describe the fund from its SEC Form D filings first, and from its website second.

How it is linked to Equidy. The Form D lists the fund at 517 Sycamore Valley Road West, Danville, CA 94526, phone (925) 223-8900, the same street and phone as Equidy. The Form D names Centrality Inc. as manager, and describes two related persons as the CEO and CFO of Centrality; we do not name them. Equidy's footer says “Investors: Central | Mortgage Income Fund” and links to central.io. The central.io About page describes Equidy as the business “focused on loan origination, underwriting, servicing, and borrower relationships,” and a diagram on its fund page runs from investors to Equidy to borrowers. So the companies' own websites tie the fund to Equidy. The Form D itself does not mention Equidy, and we have not seen the fund's offering memorandum, so we cannot say how loans are allocated, what Equidy is paid, or who bears a loss.

Reading it (our arithmetic). $300,000 is 0.6% of the $50,000,000 offering, and $300,000 across 2 investors averages $150,000 each, which fits the $100,000 minimum. The fund is therefore tiny against its stated size, and its record is short: first sale June 8, 2026, about five months before this page. A Form D is a notice, not a prospectus; the SEC does not review the offering, and the numbers say nothing about performance or conduct. Rule 506(c) allows general solicitation, so public marketing of the fund is permitted, but only accredited investors may buy.

What the fund says about itself (marketing, not documents). On central.io the fund is an “Open-End Mortgage Income Fund” with a ~8% target yield, monthly distributions, a $100,000 minimum, no structural leverage, and typical loans of about 65% loan-to-value, 12 to 36 months, interest-only and primarily first-lien. The page carries an asterisk on the target yield, and its footer says the data is “as of August 01, 2025.” A target is not a result. The Form D reports no returns, no loan count and no delinquencies, and we found no financial statements for the fund.

7. The 2015 crowd-lending profile

A BetaList startup profile dated July 14, 2015 describes Equidy as “Simple & Social Real Estate Crowd-Lending” and says it is “restoring peer-to-peer lending to its original purpose.” Other directory listings repeat the peer-to-peer wording. Nothing on equidy.com today uses that model: the site sells private-money and hard-money loans from a licensed broker, with an online application, and points investors to a separate fund. We found no SEC filing for a crowd-lending offering under the Equidy name. If you land on an old article calling Equidy a peer-to-peer site, it describes a 2015 pitch, not the current business.

8. What we could not check

• NMLS Consumer Access (Cloudflare block): license list by state and any NMLS-recorded actions. The DRE endorsement line is our only source for the number.
• California Secretary of State (rate-limited): entity number, status and filing history for Equidy, Inc. and for Centrality Inc.
• DFPI license and enforcement search (access error): whether Equidy holds a California Financing Law license.
• Court dockets (CourtListener login; no state court access): any suit naming Equidy, Inc.
• Fund documents: the private placement memorandum, subscription terms, audited statements and any delinquency data of Central Mortgage Income Fund. The website offers a “PPM Preview” behind a form.
• BBB: search snippets show an A+ listing for Equidy, Inc. under several addresses; we did not open the profile and do not rely on it.

9. Who this lender may suit, and who should compare

For a California investor with a small to mid-size flip or rental and an equity cushion, a local private lender with a DRE-licensed principal and a stated 70% LTV can be a practical option. The case against relying on it: no HMDA data, no public loan count, no current rate sheet, and no way to see how its loans perform. For a borrower outside California it is not an option at all. Compare quotes with national lenders that publish terms; the Kiavi box below is one such door.

10. What a reader can do with this

• Borrower: ask in writing for the lender of record, the license the loan is made under (DRE broker or DFPI lender), the full fee schedule including points and extension fees, and whether the rate on the 2024 page still applies.
• Check the license yourself on the DRE public lookup (license 01933832) and on NMLS Consumer Access (NMLS 1121667); both are free and take a few minutes.
• Investor offered the fund: ask for the PPM, audited statements and a loan-level report. Ask whether Equidy originates, services or is paid a fee on the fund's loans, and whether fund money competes with Equidy's own capital for the same loans.
• Accreditation: the fund is for accredited investors only under Rule 506(c); the issuer must take reasonable steps to verify that status.
• Keep the numbers in proportion: $300,000 sold to 2 investors is a start-up fund, not a track record.

Sources: California Department of Real Estate public license lookup for license 01933832 (read November 8, 2026); equidy.com home, About and fix-and-flip pages (read November 9, 2026); central.io fund, About and investor offering pages (read November 9, 2026); SEC EDGAR Form D accession 0002068548-25-000001 (May 14, 2025) and Form D/A accession 0002068548-26-000001 (October 22, 2026); FFIEC HMDA reporting filer lists for 2024 and 2025; CFPB consumer complaint database; BetaList profile of Equidy (July 14, 2015). This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.