MBA's Rankings Reveal Who Actually Put Money Out the Door

Those shifts show up in the composition of the top originators by investor type. Depositories, which had spent much of the prior cycle on the sidelines, posted a 74% year‑over‑year increase in loan production in the fourth quarter alone as they selectively re‑entered the market.

In that channel, Eastdil Secured, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase & Co., KeyBank and JLL were MBA's top originators for 2025, indicating where banks were most active and which intermediaries sat closest to their credit boxes.

Investor‑driven lenders, including many debt funds, increased originations by 46%, and the top originators in that category—JLL, Newmark, Eastdil Secured, Blackstone and CBRE—were the firms connecting business plans that needed flexible, higher‑yield capital with investors willing to provide it.

Agency lending through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac grew more modestly but remained a key pillar for multifamily. Walker & Dunlop, Wells Fargo, CBRE, Berkadia and Newmark ranked as the top originators for Fannie Mae, while Berkadia, JLL, Walker & Dunlop, CBRE and Wells Fargo led the Freddie Mac tables.

That roster mirrors where sponsors with stabilized or near‑stabilized multifamily assets actually found GSE execution in 2025. Life insurance companies stayed disciplined but active, relying heavily on JLL, Newmark, New York Life Investments, Apollo Global Management and CBRE as their top originators, particularly for lower‑leverage, long‑term loans on core assets.

Intermediaries and specialists move up the tables

MBA's list of top commercial and multifamily originators makes clear that intermediaries and niche specialists now sit alongside the largest banks and agency lenders in commanding deal flow.

In the FHA/Ginnie Mae segment, for example, Greystone, Lument, Berkadia, Dwight Capital LLC and KeyBank lead the rankings, platforms that have built deep expertise in HUD execution and affordable and seniors housing. The concentration of that business among a handful of names effectively marks out where HUD‑backed debt is truly obtainable.

Similarly, the firms appearing at or near the top of the CMBS, life company and investor‑driven categories tend to be those that can pivot between balance‑sheet, securitized and government‑backed execution as conditions shift.

Wells Fargo, Eastdil Secured, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were the top originators for CMBS in 2025, reinforcing the role of large dealer banks and a few powerful intermediaries in conduit and SASB markets.

For life companies, JLL, Newmark, New York Life Investments, Apollo Global Management and CBRE channeled long‑duration capital into income‑stable assets.

And in investor‑driven lending, where private credit has become embedded rather than episodic, JLL, Newmark, Eastdil Secured, Blackstone and CBRE set the pace.

That dynamic matters to sponsors navigating a more segmented capital landscape. Rather than a simple hierarchy of "top banks" or "top debt funds," the MBA rankings point to a network of originators that are influential within specific market lanes.

A lender that ranks high in life company placements—say, JLL or Newmark—is operating under different duration, leverage and asset‑quality constraints than a shop that dominates investor‑driven or bridge loans, such as Blackstone or one of the bigger advisory platforms.

The 2025 tables, viewed this way, function less as a scoreboard and more as a map of where particular capital sources are being intermediated: Walker & Dunlop and Berkadia as gateways to the agencies, Greystone and Lument for FHA/Ginnie Mae, Nuveen Real Estate, Barings, Principal Real Estate Investors and Voya Investment Management LLC for pension‑fund allocations and JPMorgan Chase & Co., Walker & Dunlop, Newmark, CBRE and Affinius Capital in the "other investors" bucket.

Property type preferences are written into the rankings

The 2025 league tables also reflect a more pronounced sorting by property type. MBA's quarterly data show that, by late 2025, originations for office properties were up 95% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, multifamily was up more than 20%, industrial and healthcare posted healthy gains and hotel and parts of retail saw declines.

Those preferences inevitably shaped which firms rose in the rankings, particularly in categories with heavy exposure to transitional office, single‑tenant industrial and necessity retail. CMBS and investor‑driven leaders such as Wells Fargo, Eastdil Secured, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Blackstone, JLL and Newmark picked up much of the riskier business, often using structure and spread rather than pure leverage to make deals work.

For investors, the implication is that the "top lender" depends heavily on the type of financing. A platform that ranks near the top of the office or hotel league tables in 2025 is doing so by absorbing leasing, rollover and capex risk that many competitors still avoid, likely at spreads that compensate for that stance.

By contrast, firms leading in FHA/Ginnie Mae or agency multifamily volumes—Greystone, Lument, Berkadia, KeyBank, Walker & Dunlop, CBRE, JLL and Wells Fargo—are channeling government‑backed or mission‑driven capital into segments where performance has remained more resilient, but where affordability and regulatory considerations drive underwriting as much as pure market rent growth.

For industrial, logistics and other favored sectors, the prominence of life‑company and pension‑fund originators such as JLL, Newmark, New York Life Investments, Nuveen Real Estate, Barings, Principal and Voya signals where long‑term, lower‑leverage money has been most willing to play.

Reading the rankings as a strategy guide

MBA's annual originations rankings have always been a reference point for the industry, but in a year like 2025, they also double as a strategy guide for where to take deals in 2026.

MBA projects that total commercial mortgage origination volume will climb again in 2026, with total production expected to reach more than $800 billion and multifamily production approaching $400 billion.

If that forecast holds, the firms that climbed the 2025 tables by leaning into specific investor mandates—JLL, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Eastdil Secured, Newmark, Wells Fargo, CBRE, Walker & Dunlop, KeyBank, Berkadia and Bank of America at the top line, and the various specialists by investor group—are positioned to capture a larger share of that growth.