Kennedy Funding Review: Fee Disputes in Court, 2005 to 2025

Why this review exists

Searches for “kennedy funding reviews” and “kennedy funding lawsuit” return the lender's own pages, directory entries and blog summaries. What they do not do is read the court decisions. We downloaded five, plus the lender's current loan criteria, and set them side by side. We have no affiliate relationship with Kennedy Funding and earn nothing if you contact it. For how bridge loans work in general see our bridge loan guide, and for typical hard money pricing our hard money loan rates page.

Two cautions about names. The older decisions name Kennedy Funding, Inc.; the 2020 to 2025 case names Kennedy Funding Financial, LLC. We report each case under the caption the court used and do not assert how the entities relate. And these are court records of disputes, which by their nature show borrowers and lenders who disagreed. They are not a count of all loans, and a closed loan that went smoothly leaves no docket.

1. What the lender says it is

The home page calls Kennedy Funding “America's most trusted bridge loan lender,” says it is “built for speed and go from approval to closing in just a few days,” and claims “over $4 billion in closed loans.” The About page says “We've been the leaders in fast, flexible funding since 1987” and lists “2 Days for Commitment” and “Closing in as little as 5 days.” We did not verify the $4 billion or the 1987 date. The site lists closings from $1,120,000 to $50,000,000 and includes a land loan in Cartagena, Colombia (news post dated July 28, 2026) and a $3.633 million bridge loan in Naples, Florida (November 5, 2026).

The loan criteria page has a section headed “Commitment Fees: They're Part of the Business.” Its body text did not load for us (it appears to be a video or a collapsed panel), so we cannot quote what it says about refunds. That is the single most important thing to read before you pay.

Our arithmetic on the “as low as 2%” figure. If the 2% applies to the loan amount, the floor is $20,000 on a $1,000,000 loan and $100,000 on a $5,000,000 loan (our arithmetic). The court cases below show fees stated both ways, as flat sums and as shares of the loan.

2. The court record

The newest case: collateral that was never written down

In the Third Circuit's words, Kennedy “executed an agreement to issue Appellee Quimera Holding Group SAC (“Quimera”) a loan in the amount of 55% the value of certain collateral. But the agreement failed to identify the collateral.” The Loan Commitment of November 1, 2017 set a minimum loan of $3,000,000 and a maximum of $50,000,000. On December 27 the borrower paid $85,000 to appraise nine properties; on January 23, 2018 Kennedy offered $32,600,000 on those nine. After the borrower asked to remove five, Kennedy offered $23,000,000, which “fell below 55% of the value of the collateral.” No loan closed, and Kennedy “refused to return fees paid by Quimera under the Loan Commitment.”

The District of New Jersey had granted summary judgment for the borrower on the breach claim. The Third Circuit disagreed: a reasonable jury could find the parties agreed to the nine appraised properties, so “what collateral the parties agreed to use under the Loan Commitment presents a genuine dispute of material fact.” It vacated and remanded on February 13, 2025; the opinion is marked not precedential. The borrower had also pleaded fraud, negligent misrepresentation and a New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act claim; the opinion says those were dismissed on the borrower's own agreement if it won on contract, and “may be revived upon remand.” The next fact we have is a docket entry of November 13, 2025: “ORDER OF DISMISSAL WITH PREJUDICE.” We could not see the underlying filings, so we do not know whether the parties settled, and we make no claim about who prevailed. The docket page is a third-party mirror of the court's record.

What this teaches a borrower: the dispute turned on a schedule that listed no collateral. The Third Circuit listed three facts a jury could rely on: the borrower first asked the lender to select properties, paid appraisal fees for the nine it selected, and did not object to them until after the offer and the three-day response period. If you sign a commitment, the collateral schedule, the fee schedule and the refund conditions should be filled in before money moves (this is a drafting point, not legal advice).

Omni (2010): both sides blamed, fees returned

Omni Credit Alliance sued for return of $260,000 paid in application and commitment fees “for a loan that never closed.” After a bench trial the district court ordered rescission, finding “both parties were engaging in subterfuge and chicanery” and had breached the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The Third Circuit affirmed on March 22, 2010, noting the lender's failure to negotiate in good faith after the commitment (“deflecting Omni's collateral proposals and rejecting them with little explanation”). Because the court said both sides acted badly, this is not a one-sided finding.

Bankruptcy court (2005): the fee clause worked as written

In the Korea Chosun Daily Times Chapter 11 case, a court order authorised a postpetition loan of $2.2 million (later $2.4 million) with a $72,000 commitment fee and legal costs, “capped in the aggregate at $100,000, in the event that the loan does not close through no fault of KFI.” On December 22, 2005 the court found “that the failure of the KFI Loan to close was not the fault of KFI,” because the debtor could not complete the closing requirements and chose to sell the property instead. It ordered $85,000 paid (the $100,000 cap less $15,000 already paid). On the court's own figures, the commitment fee was 3.27% of the $2.2 million loan and the cap 4.55% (our arithmetic). This case shows the mirror image of the others: a fee that was owed.

Eighth Circuit (2010): a $1,675,000 verdict cut to $675,000

A jury found for a cemetery seller on contract, fraud and constructive fraud, awarding $675,000 in compensatory and $1,000,000 in punitive damages. The opinion records that the seller held a mortgage on the cemetery and was told $675,000 would be held for him in escrow, and that KFI never placed the $675,000 in an escrow account. On September 24, 2010 the Eighth Circuit affirmed the contract count, reversed the fraud count, vacated the punitive award and left the $675,000 compensatory award standing.

Virgin Islands Supreme Court (2020)

In a case captioned Kennedy Funding Inc. as agent for certain co-lenders v. GB Properties, Ltd. (2020 VI 5, filed May 20, 2020), the territory's Supreme Court affirmed a summary judgment against Kennedy in a dispute with a buyer at a U.S. Marshal's sale over rents collected during the redemption period and a $50,000 sale commission. It does not concern commitment fees and we include it for completeness.

3. Registry checks: HMDA, SEC and licences

HMDA. We downloaded the FFIEC list of reporting institutions for each year: 4,483 for 2022, 5,135 for 2023, 4,927 for 2024 and 4,791 for 2025. Searching the saved lists for “kennedy” returned nothing in any year (our count). Kennedy Funding has no HMDA file, so there are no 2025 or 2024 origination counts to compare, and the filter question (action taken, occupancy, business purpose) does not arise. That is consistent with a business-purpose commercial lender, and we draw no inference from it beyond this: there is no public loan-level data on its volume or pricing. Compare that with Hard Money Bankers, which we checked the same way.

SEC. An EDGAR company-name search for “kennedy funding” on November 8, 2026 returned “No matching companies.” We found no Form D filed under the name, so unlike some lenders it is not raising registered or exempt-offering money from outside investors that we can see. Other names may be used by affiliates; we did not trace any.

State licences. We could not query NMLS Consumer Access or the state regulator databases from our tools, and no regulator action turned up in the web search we ran. We therefore report no licence number and no enforcement record, and make no claim that there is none. Ask the lender which entity is lender of record and which licence, if any, applies in the state of your property.

4. What a reader can do with this

• Ask for the commitment letter before paying anything and read three clauses: what the fee is for, whether any part is refundable and on what conditions, and who decides “fault” if the loan does not close. The bankruptcy case turned on exactly that wording.
• Make sure the collateral schedule is complete. The Quimera commitment named no properties, and the dispute that followed ran from a 2017 meeting to a docket entry in 2025.
• Ask what the “2%” covers: origination, commitment, appraisal, legal fees, due diligence. Get every third-party cost (appraisal, environmental, legal) quoted in writing.
• Do not read the court cases as a verdict on the whole firm. They are a small, dated sample of disputes. They do show the questions to settle before signing.
• Compare at least two other quotes. Our hard money lenders guide and land loans guide cover the alternatives.

Sources: Third Circuit No. 24-1041, Quimera Holding Group SAC v. Kennedy Funding Financial LLC, opinion filed February 13, 2025; docket page for D.N.J. 2:20-cv-17764 (order of dismissal, November 13, 2025); Third Circuit No. 08-1078, opinion filed March 22, 2010; Eighth Circuit No. 09-1670, opinion filed September 24, 2010; U.S. Bankruptcy Court E.D.N.Y. No. 03-25450-ess, memorandum decision of December 22, 2005; Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands S. Ct. Civ. No. 2018-0014 (2020 VI 5); Kennedy Funding website pages (home, about, loan criteria, loan closings), read November 8, 2026; FFIEC HMDA reporting filer lists for 2022 to 2025; SEC EDGAR company search. Court outcomes are stated as the courts stated them; unproven allegations are not repeated as fact. Quoted text is verbatim from the saved documents. Figures labelled “our arithmetic” are calculated by us. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice. Compiled by CrowdfundedWealth on November 8, 2026.