Scott Waynebern

MF1 grew from issuing $4 billion in multifamily bridge loans in 2024 to $5.4 billion in 2025, including $533 million in fixed-rate and $4.9 billion in floating-rate loans.

Scott Waynebern sees several big-picture reasons for the firm’s growth, all having to do with the evergreen success of multifamily investments.

“One of the reasons we focus on multi-
family is that it is more resilient and less volatile [given] the technological innovations happening in the economy,” said Waynebern, who makes a comparison with the general disruption caused by the explosion of artificial intelligence.

“AI is creating a class of real estate data centers and potentially creating challenges for the office sector. But it’s not changing the way people live,” said Waynebern. “They want to live in apartments. So multifamily is more resilient.” 

MF1 was formed in 2017 as a joint venture between Limekiln Real Estate — Waynebern is that firm’s president — and Berkshire Residential. The firm programmatically securitizes its floating-rate originations within CRE collateralized loan obligations, and issued $4.6 billion of CLOs in 2025, making it the No. 1 CRE CLO issuer in the market. 

MF1’s notable deals over the past year included a $443 million loan on a portfolio of 10 properties consisting of 2,517 units across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and a $171 million fixed-rate loan to refinance an MF1
floating-rate loan to the same borrower that, the company said, serves as the initial case study for a floating-to-fixed-rate strategy that MF1 hopes to build on. 

The firm recently added a five-year, fixed-rate product to its offerings, further establishing itself as a “one-stop shop” for multifamily financing products, which Waynebern said puts MF1 in the best sector with the right product at the right time.

“All the markets have been moving more toward either five-year fixed or floating,” said Waynebern. “We have big cohorts of five-year and 10-year loans maturing at the same time over the next few years. So the opportunity to lend in multifamily and the health of multifamily, because it’s a more stable asset class and it’s more resilient, makes it a great time to be a multifamily lender.”