Reliance First Capital Review: 3,953 Loans in HMDA 2025, Only 215 to Investors — What That Means

Who Reliance First Capital is, and who owns it now

Reliance First Capital, LLC is a Delaware limited liability company licensed as a mortgage lender (the Connecticut Department of Banking order of 2015 describes it exactly that way and gives NMLS number 58775). It is a direct-to-consumer lender. Tiptree Inc.'s Form 10-K for 2025 (accession 0001393726-26-000009) describes the business as “primarily originating and servicing agency-eligible (Federal Housing Administration (“FHA”) and Veterans Administration (“VA”)) and conventional and government loans”. The company’s own “Company Information” page (archived March 10, 2026) calls itself “an approved FHA, VA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lender”.

For a borrower the practical point is that the lender you applied to in 2025 and the one you would apply to now are the same legal entity under a new owner. The HMDA numbers below describe the period under Tiptree. We have not seen a 2026 HMDA file, and none exists yet: 2026 loans are reported in 2027. Tiptree said the loss in 2025 was driven by the after-tax loss on disposal, “lower origination volumes” and unrealized losses on the mortgage servicing asset.

The recount: 2024 against 2025, same filters

We downloaded the complete HMDA loan-level files for LEI 549300YW2UBCMDRMBT48 from the FFIEC data browser for 2024 and 2025 and applied identical filters: action_taken=1 (loan originated), then occupancy_type=3 (investment property) for the investor group. The business-purpose group uses business_or_commercial_purpose=1. The two groups overlap but are not the same, and that difference matters.

The percentage changes are our arithmetic from the counts. Two readings follow. First, the investor business is small and steady: 4.5% of dollars in both years. Second, the mix inside it is shifting from consumer-purpose to business-purpose files, so the business-purpose count grew 17.9% while the investment-property count fell 6.9%. Every one of the 125 business-purpose loans in 2025 is also an investment-property loan.

The 2025 file is a snapshot of the FFIEC data and the 2024 file comes from the one-year release; HMDA data can be revised, so figures read on a later date may differ by a few records.

The whole book is a consumer book

In 2025, 3,196 of 3,953 loans (80.9%) were cash-out refinances and 3,715 (94.0%) were on the borrower’s principal residence (our arithmetic). Top states for the whole book in 2025 were New York (644), Ohio (587), North Carolina (562), Pennsylvania (364), Tennessee (272) and Virginia (190). A reader who found this lender by searching for rental financing should know that it is a home-loan company that also writes some investor loans, not a lender built around investors the way Kiavi, Visio Lending or Lima One are.

What an investor actually gets

The 215 investment-property loans of 2025 look like this.

Three facts matter to a rental investor. The product is long-term fixed-style financing: with 207 of 215 loans at 360 months and none interest-only, nothing in the file looks like a 12-month bridge or fix-and-flip loan, which is what most of our other borrower pages cover. The price is about 0.9 of a point above the lender’s own consumer loans (median 7.50% against 6.625%, our arithmetic), which is the usual premium for investment property. And three out of four investor loans are cash-out refinances, so the lender is used mostly by owners tapping equity in a property they already hold, not by buyers: 54 of 215 were purchases.

Loan-level HMDA has no field for DSCR. The company’s own Investor Advantage page (archived May 21, 2026, a company statement we could not otherwise verify) says the program needs “no other income docs” beyond the lease on the subject property, allows vesting “in an LLC or Corporation”, offers “cash-out (business purposes only) to 80% LTV”, and requires a “≥1.00 minimum DSCR”. That fits the 125 business-purpose loans. It does not tell us how many of the 215 came through that program, and the 90 consumer-purpose investment loans were presumably underwritten as ordinary mortgages. Compare how it prices against a DSCR specialist in our guide DSCR loan versus a conventional mortgage, and see BPL Mortgage for a lender whose business is almost entirely this kind of loan.

Where the investor loans were

Both years cover 24 states. Among the 125 business-purpose loans of 2025, New York has 28, Pennsylvania 19 and North Carolina 18.

Who bought the loans

HMDA records who bought a loan within the reporting year. In 2025, 164 of the 215 investor loans carry purchaser type 71 (a credit union, mortgage company or finance company), 20 purchaser type 1 (Fannie Mae), 18 purchaser type 3 (Freddie Mac) and 7 type 6 (a commercial bank), with 6 not sold in the year. All but one of the 125 business-purpose loans are type 71. In 2024 the agency share was larger (44 and 31 of 231). The lender sells almost all of what it makes, so the party that holds your note is rarely Reliance First Capital.

Regulatory record: what we could open

The database also holds 12 complaints for “First Reliance Holdings LLC”, a different company that comes up in the same name search; we left them out. In 2025 the 26 complaints were 19 mortgage, 6 credit-reporting and 1 debt-collection; the most common issue was “Trouble during payment process” (11), which concerns the loan after closing, plus 4 about incorrect information on a credit report and 3 each about applying for a mortgage and struggling to pay. Of the 26, 24 closed with an explanation, 1 with monetary relief and 1 with non-monetary relief. The 2025 count of 26 compares with 7 in 2024 and 11 in 2023; against 3,953 loans that is 6.6 complaints per 1,000 originations, although the complaints come from the lender’s servicing book as well as new loans, so the ratio is only a rough scale (our arithmetic). Business-purpose investor loans fall outside the consumer rules the database is built for, so for this part of the book silence there is not proof of a clean record.

We found no other state order, no SEC action and no federal enforcement action naming the company in the sources we read, but we did not search every state regulator, and the NMLS list is the place where all state actions are collected.

What the data do not show

• No DSCR or program field. We cannot count Investor Advantage loans inside the 215.
• No points, fees or prepayment terms. HMDA reports 0 prepayment-penalty terms; the loan estimate will show the real price.
• No 2026 data. The sale to Carrington on May 1, 2026 may change pricing, products and the investor program; 2026 loans appear in the 2027 HMDA release.
• No servicing record for investor loans. Complaints about payment trouble may involve consumer loans.
• No NMLS list. The license and regulatory-action list on NMLS Consumer Access was not readable by us.

What a reader can do with this

• Ask which program your loan is in. If you are buying or refinancing a rental, ask whether it will be a consumer-style conventional loan or the Investor Advantage business-purpose loan, and what the DSCR and loan-to-value limits are for your property.
• Ask for the rate sheet in writing and compare it with 7.50%. That was the median for this lender’s investor loans in 2025; the middle half ran from 6.99% to 7.875%. A quote far above 8.125% was in the top tenth of its 2025 loans.
• Ask who will own and service the loan. The lender sold 164 of the 215 investor loans to a non-agency buyer, and the company has a new owner since May 1, 2026.
• Look up NMLS ID 58775 on NMLS Consumer Access and your state regulator before you apply.
• Get a second quote the same day from a lender whose business is rentals. Our pages on Kiavi, Visio Lending and Lima One list what each one reports. For the cost of buying an investment property at all, see down payment on an investment property by HMDA data.

FAQ

Sources, read November 7, 2026: FFIEC HMDA loan-level files for LEI 549300YW2UBCMDRMBT48, 2024 and 2025 (originated loans and all actions) and the FFIEC filer lists; Tiptree Inc. Form 8-K filed May 4, 2026 (accession 0001393726-26-000029), Form 8-K earnings exhibit of March 6, 2026 and Form 10-K for 2025 (accession 0001393726-26-000009); the Connecticut Department of Banking consent order in the matter of Reliance First Capital, LLC, issued May 20, 2015 (read from the Internet Archive snapshot of September 1, 2025); the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database search API for company RELIANCE FIRST CAPITAL LLC; archived pages of reliancefirst.com (Investor Advantage, May 21, 2026; Company Information, March 10, 2026; Licenses, August 10, 2026). NMLS Consumer Access did not answer our request. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.