Scott Waynebern

MF1, a joint venture of Berkshire Residential and Limekiln Real Estate formed in 2017, experienced an originations bump over the past year, continuing its long-standing focus of lending exclusively on rental housing assets. 

The alternative lender closed $4 billion of multifamily bridge loans for the one-year period ending March 1, 2025, a 48 percent increase from 2023. MFI planted the seeds for its strong yearly lending volume via 52 transactions long before 2024 through active fundraising and was able to thrive for much of the year when other lenders stepped back due to unknowns with interest rates, according to Scott Waynebern, who is also president at Limekiln Real Estate.

“Because we raised money as a series of private equity funds, we had a tremendous amount of dry powder going into `24 whereas I think a lot of our competitors became active in `25,” Waynebern said. “Because there wasn’t a lot of competition, it was a great time to be a lender in terms of the covenants you can get, and the assets that you can pick, and the credit metrics that you could achieve.”

MF1’s lending activity included traditional primary markets and the growing Sun Belt, which accounted for $1.8 billion of the volume. Waynebern noted that MF1’s portfolio grew larger than any U.S. bridge loan portfolio of any of the country’s publicly traded mortgage REITs.

The active past year included closing a $239 million loan for 53 manufactured housing properties in 10 states across the mid-Atlantic and Midwest. It also issued three collateralized loan obligations totaling $3.2 billion, which accounted for 25 percent market share in that period. 

MF1 also launched a fixed-income platform in late 2024 aimed at providing more options for multifamily borrowers in an evolving market. The debt fund had $1.99 billion of capital commitments when it closed in December.