Merchants Mortgage & Trust Review 2026: 1,982 Loans, 10% Median

Who Merchants Mortgage & Trust is, and who is buying it

Merchants Mortgage & Trust Corporation is a private lender to real estate investors, headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado according to its own About page. The same page calls it “a premier nationwide private real estate lender” and lists four programs: Fix & Flip, Ground-Up Construction, Multifamily and Commercial, and DSCR. Its loan-programs page claims “$5BN+ Total RTL Loans Funded,” “7,200+ Total Housing Units Created” and “2,500+ Total Clients Served.” Those are the lender's statements, which we cannot test with public data. The page gives no loan amounts, leverage, terms or states, and the only rate on it is a client testimonial that says “rates as low as 8.75%.” The About page gives two founding years on the same page: “Founded in 1961” in the text and 1970 in the timeline.

The ownership story is the part a borrower should know about. According to the August 27, 2026 press release attached to Velocity Financial's Form 8-K, Merchants is “Toorak's direct origination business in the United States,” and the company had approximately 120 employees of Toorak's approximately 280 as of June 30, 2026. Velocity's investor presentation says Merchants has grown about twofold since Toorak acquired it in 2022, while the Merchants site says it partnered with KKR in 2022 and dates “KKR acquires Merchants and Orchard Funding” to 2024 on its timeline. We read these as one ownership chain (KKR funds, Toorak, Merchants) with inconsistent dates on the lender's own page, and do not resolve it.

For a borrower the practical reading is narrow: the press release says the brand and management continue. It does not say whether the loan documents, servicing or the programs described on the website will change after closing, and we do not guess. Our Velocity and Toorak deal analysis covers the structure and our Velocity Financial review the buyer. As of October 31, 2026 the SEC submissions feed for Velocity (CIK 0001692376) shows no 8-K after the one of August 27, 2026, so no closing has been reported there.

The borrower side: what the 2025 HMDA file shows

The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) obliges lenders to report applications and loans. The 2025 file for the lender's identifier holds 2,300 records, all business-purpose, first-lien, conventional and closed-end. Of these, 2,280 are coded as investment property and 20 as principal residence.

The loans are large for a flip lender. The middle half runs from $275,000 to $695,000, 258 loans are $1 million or more and the largest is $5,935,000. The loan purpose is mostly home purchase (1,770, or 89.3% of the originated loans, our arithmetic), which fits fix-and-flip and bridge financing, while 146 are coded home improvement and 66 refinances. Only 20 loans are coded principal residence; the rest are investment property.

Price: a tight band around 10%

Almost three loans in four sit between 9.25% and 10.5%. The rate barely moves with loan size: the median was 10.25% under $250,000, 10.0% from $250,000 to $499,999 and 9.825% at $1,000,000 or more (the last from the full file, 258 loans). The 63 loans with a 360-month term are priced lower, at a median of 9.25%, and 12-month loans higher, at 10.5% on 74 loans. HMDA records the note rate only. It shows no points, origination charges or total loan costs for any of the 1,982 loans (those fields are blank), so a borrower should read 10.0% as a floor for the cost and not the cost.

On the median $425,000 loan, interest alone is $3,541.67 a month at 10.0%, $3,276.04 at the 9.25% the cheapest tenth of loans carry and $3,895.83 at the 11.0% the dearest tenth carry; over 15 months the gap between the two ends is about $9,297 (our arithmetic, interest-only, before points and fees). The file flags 455 loans as interest-only and none as balloon, and we do not report either flag as a feature of the product, because the file does not say how the lender sets them.

Term: from 12 months to 15

The shift is the clearest change in the lender's file. In 2024, 79.8% of loans had a 12-month term; in 2025, 89.0% had 15 months (our arithmetic). The median loan did not change ($425,000 in both years) and the median note rate went from 10.25% to 10.0%. For a borrower this matters because a 15-month loan gives three more months before the maturity date, but the file does not show whether extension fees, points or exit fees changed. Ask for the full fee sheet.

Leverage: the file is not a term sheet

HMDA reports a loan-to-value ratio on 1,953 of the 1,982 loans. The median is 70.0% (middle half 66.75% to 75.0%), 348 loans are exactly 70.0% and 458 are above 75%. But 217 loans (11.1%) show a ratio above 100%, with a maximum of 149.61%, and the median size of those loans is $245,000, well below the lender's overall $425,000 median. The file does not explain this. One reading is that the loan amount includes renovation funds held back for work not yet done, so the ratio compares the whole commitment with today's value; that is our reading, not something the file states. The practical point is that an LTV number from HMDA cannot be compared with the leverage on a quote.

Where the loans are

California, Colorado, Arizona, Washington and Oregon make 1,586 of the 1,982 loans (80.0%) and $1,020,840,000 of $1,165,820,000 (87.6%), our arithmetic. Velocity's investor presentation says the same: Merchants “maintains a strong presence in core western states” and lists Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. The largest counties are Los Angeles (304), Maricopa in Arizona (213), Denver (92), Sacramento (87), San Bernardino (87) and Orange (80). Arizona grew the most, from 88 loans in 2024 to 232 in 2025 (our arithmetic: 2.6 times). In all, 34 jurisdictions have an originated loan, including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, but the long tail is thin: Florida has 71, Texas 50 and the next ten states 35 or fewer each. The company's own site says only “40+ state footprint,” so a borrower in a state outside the western five should ask whether and under which licence the lender will lend there. For state rules and the other lenders, see our California, Colorado and Arizona pages.

Denied, withdrawn and sold: what the other columns show

Of 2,024 applications that ended in a loan or a denial, 42 were denied: 2.1%. Twenty-five of the 42 are in California and every one lists the same reason, collateral. The 276 withdrawn applications are 12.0% of all records. A denial rate this low does not by itself mean easy approval: a file that is dropped before a decision is recorded as withdrawn, which is where the 276 sit, and the file does not say why they were withdrawn. In 2024 the file had 182 withdrawn and no denied records at all.

Every one of the 1,982 originated loans, and every one of the 1,306 in 2024, carries purchaser type 71, defined by the FFIEC as “Credit union, mortgage company, or finance company.” That code means each loan was sold to another party within the reporting year. This is common in the niche: in our tabulation of the 2025 national files, Loan Funder, RF Renovo, Easy Street, RCN, Conventus and Anchor also show 97.6% or more of their short-term loans with a purchaser other than none, while Rain City Capital shows none. We do not read the sale as a problem. It means the lender did not keep these loans on its own balance sheet through year-end. HMDA does not say who the purchaser was.

What the data cannot tell you

• Today's rate or fees. HMDA is 2025. Points, origination charges, total loan costs, discount points and prepayment terms are blank for all 1,982 loans.
• Performance. The file shows originations, withdrawals and denials, not payoffs, extensions, defaults or foreclosures.
• The program menu. The website lists four programs but no amounts, leverage, terms or states, so the HMDA terms above are the only numbers we can read.
• Complaints. The CFPB Consumer Complaint Database returned zero hits for “Merchants Mortgage” in the company field and in an all-fields search on October 30, 2026 (data last updated that day), and zero for “MMTC.” That is not a clean bill of health: business-purpose loans may fall outside what the database covers. Independent review sites are also thin: a search on October 31, 2026 found no meaningful reviews on BiggerPockets or other directories, and the favourable quotes sit on the lender's own site.
• Licences. The site refers to a License Information page whose content we could not read, and NMLS Consumer Access cannot be read by a script. Check the lender's licence in your state before you pay for an appraisal.

What a reader can do with this

• Ask which book your deal belongs to. The lender's loans are overwhelmingly 15-month investor loans at about 10%. If your quote is far from 9.25% to 11.0%, ask what is different and get points, draw and inspection fees, extension terms and exit fees in writing.
• Ask what changes at closing. If you are mid-loan or about to sign, ask in writing whether the lender entity, servicer or loan terms change when the Velocity deal closes, and who will hold the loan.
• Treat the website numbers as claims. “$5BN+” and “2,500+ clients” are the lender's statements, and the site's own founding year differs between two sections of one page.
• Compare on the same day. Our hard money lender ranking and hard money loan rates page put this lender next to the others, and our fix-and-flip lender page compares terms.
• Check the licence for your state before any deposit.

FAQ

Sources, read October 31, 2026: FFIEC HMDA Data Browser loan-level files for LEI 549300YX5RPSSMR88K92, years 2025 and 2024, and the FFIEC LAR data-field definitions, tabulated by us; the national 2025 files for the peer comparison; Velocity Financial, Inc. Form 8-K filed August 27, 2026 (CIK 0001692376, accession 0001193125-26-369585) with Exhibits 99.1 and 99.2, and the SEC EDGAR submissions feed for that CIK; the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database search API; merchantsmtg.com loan-programs and About pages. This is analysis of public records, not investment, legal, lending or tax advice. We have no commercial relationship with Merchants Mortgage & Trust; Kiavi is a paid link.