Multifamily lending jumped 32% in 2025 to $381.8 billion, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual survey of the commercial and multifamily mortgage market, a sharp rebound that adds to a broader picture of commercial real estate lending thawing after a multiyear slowdown.
The 2,530 different lenders MBA tracked in its annual report, published Aug. 13 via MBA Newslink, originated new mortgages on multifamily properties with five or more units totaling $381.8 billion for the year β up from $289 billion in 2024, when 2,463 lenders participated in the market, according to MBA’s prior-year survey. The increase in both dollar volume and lender count points to broadening participation across the multifamily lending market, not just larger loans from a shrinking pool of active lenders.
The rebound follows a difficult stretch for multifamily and commercial real estate finance more broadly, as elevated interest rates through 2023 and into 2024 pushed many lenders to the sidelines and left borrowers facing maturing loans with far higher refinancing costs than when the original debt was underwritten. Big banks have been returning to commercial real estate lending in recent quarters as rate volatility has eased somewhat and property valuations have stabilized in most sectors, giving lenders more confidence to reenter a market many pulled back from during the 2022-2023 rate-hike cycle.
Multifamily lending in particular has benefited from continued renter demand and, in many metros, moderating new supply after a construction wave that peaked in 2023 and 2024. That combination has helped stabilize occupancy and rent growth in many markets even as some Sun Belt metros continue working through a supply overhang, giving lenders more confidence in underwriting new apartment loans than they had a year or two ago.
The lending rebound has also drawn new entrants and consolidation among specialized platforms. Zions Bancorporation recently acquired Basis Investment Group’s agency multifamily lending platform, part of a broader pattern of banks and specialty lenders building out or acquiring dedicated multifamily lending capacity to capture a larger share of the growing origination volume MBA’s data now confirms.
The 2025 results also track with MBA’s own forecasting. In February, the trade group projected that total commercial and multifamily mortgage originations across all property types would rise 27% to $805 billion in 2026, building on what MBA economists described at the time as a stabilizing rate environment and improving property valuations across most commercial sectors. The 2025 multifamily-specific data released this week suggests that recovery was already well underway last year, ahead of MBA’s own 2026 projections.
What it means: A 32% jump in origination volume, with growth in both total dollars and the number of active lenders, is a meaningfully stronger signal than a volume increase driven by just a handful of large lenders scaling up. It suggests confidence has returned broadly across bank, agency and life-company lenders rather than being concentrated among a few well-capitalized players β a distinction that matters for how easily borrowers across different loan sizes and property types can access financing as the multifamily sector works through its next growth cycle.
