A house, duplex, triplex or fourplex held as a rental or for resale, not lived in by the borrower. It has fewer than five units, so it is not multifamily.
The OCC handbook defines a 1-4 family residential property as one with fewer than five dwelling units. When the borrower does not live there, lenders call it an investor or non-owner-occupied 1-4. It sits between two worlds. The collateral looks like a home, but the loan is repaid from rent or from a sale, and many lenders underwrite it as a business loan.
Regulation C requires lenders to report, for each covered loan, whether the property will be a principal residence, a second residence or an investment property, how many dwelling units secure the loan, and whether the loan is primarily for a business or commercial purpose. Those three fields are how investor loans on one to four units can be separated from ordinary home mortgages in the public file.
Banks, credit unions and non-bank lenders all make these loans. A bank may want the borrower’s full tax returns and a global cash flow. A non-bank lender may size the loan on the property’s rent alone. Ask which method a lender uses before you send documents.
How it shows up in the data here
HMDA is the source. This site counts loans each lender made in 2025 on one to four units where the property was reported as an investment property or the loan as business purpose. See investor 1-4 lenders and loan comps. Bank call reports do not help here: the 1-4 family line mixes owner-occupied homes with rentals.
Go further
- Investor 1-4 lenders: Lenders that made investor loans on one to four units in 2025.
- Ranking by loans made: Lenders ranked by number of 1-4 investor loans in HMDA.
- DSCR calculator: Cash flow over debt service. Type the cash flow and the loan terms, see the ratio and the cushion before it falls to 1.00x.
- LTV and LTC calculator: Loan to value and loan to cost, the equity a lender will ask for, and the federal supervisory limit for the property type.
- How to read HMDA data for multifamily and investor loans: HMDA is the one public file that lists individual apartment and rental-house loans by lender, amount, county and year. It covers loans on dwellings only, and not every lender reports.
- How to pick banks for a deal with public data: Public filings cannot tell you which bank will say yes. They can tell you which banks are large enough, already hold loans like yours and lend where the property is. That is enough to turn four thousand banks into six phone calls.
Related terms
- Multifamily (5+ units): Residential rental property with five or more units. Banks, credit unions and HMDA all draw the line between four units and five.
- DSCR loan: A business-purpose mortgage on a rental home of one to four units that is sized mainly on the property's rent against its payment, not on the borrower's personal income.
- Fix-and-flip loan: A short-term business-purpose loan to buy a house, renovate it and sell it, repaid from the sale instead of from monthly income.
- Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA): The federal law that makes mortgage lenders collect and publish loan-level data on loans secured by a dwelling, including apartment buildings and 1-4 unit rentals.
- Non-bank lender: A non-bank lender is a company that makes loans but does not take deposits, so it is not a bank, a savings institution or a credit union.
Sources
Plain definitions for orientation, not legal, tax or credit advice. A lender's own policy decides what it will do.