Despite non-QM growth in 2025, why brokers might still be missing out on investor loans
Talk to any non-QM lender, and they will tell you how much the sector has grown and thrived in 2025.
Even conventional lenders like Rocket are rolling out DSCR loans to their customers in response to the demand for a wider variety of investor-specific loan products.
Despite all that, one executive in the non-QM space still believes some brokers are not taking advantage of having access to these products. Not only are these brokers missing out on potential investor loans, but they may also be narrowing their income sources, leaving them more susceptible to market downturns.
Ben Fertig (pictured top), president of Constructive Capital, is working to spread the word that these non-QM products would be helpful to brokers, whether through his company or others.
“They don't use them enough, in my opinion,” Fertig told Mortgage Professional America. “I'm trying to spread the message that they should use them more, especially brokers whose core competency, historically, has been conventional government loans or anything that's owner-occupied.”
Diversifying revenue
Fertig said that while owner-occupied mortgage loans will always be the largest sector of the mortgage industry, investor loans are continuing to grow in popularity. Brokers who don’t have access to non-QM products are shutting themselves out of that market segment.
“Owner-occupied loans are always going to be a much bigger market, but if you look at the trend, there's more opportunity to lend to investors on a relative basis,” Fertig said. “They're much less rate sensitive. The other thing is that the investor base, by nature, most of these guys own more than one property. It's a recurring borrower base. It makes it much more efficient in terms of your cost to acquire that borrower when they borrow multiple times.”
Not only do brokers benefit from working with customers who are more likely to come back for additional mortgage loans more frequently than the standard owner-occupied customer, but it also helps shield a broker if the conventional market hits a slump.
“The general diversification of your revenue stream is the other thing,” Fertig said. “I think to the extent that you're a leader or an owner of a brokerage or an IMB, you should have these products in production to recruit loan officers, to retain loan officers, to diversify your revenue streams.”
For brokers considering adding investor loans to their portfolio, Fertig believes it’s important to work with an established non-QM provider to make the learning curve as easy to navigate as possible.
“Of course, we think we do a great job with this, but there are also other lenders in this space that make the nuances of these loans easy in transition,” he said. “So we spent a lot of time making these easily understandable and a good experience for both the broker and their borrower client. And there are others that do as well.”
No dinosaurs
One thing he believes is a challenge for non-QM lenders is ensuring brokers have the same experience with an investor loan as they would with a conventional loan with companies like UWM or Rocket.
“One of the things that's prevalent is that when they're doing a conventional or government loan, if you're a broker, you do a loan with UWM, like the technology and the process is so buttoned up,” Fertig said. “Part of it is because conventional and government and owner-occupied loans in general are much more standardized. It's a much narrower operating channel. It’s very simple.
“Then, when you add nuances, you've got to make sure that you're supporting those nuances, because the thing will go off the rails and it becomes something different than what they're used to. That is definitely a value-add that lenders have to provide to the broker base.”
Peter Idziak of Polunsky Beitel Green urges mortgage brokers to verify that AI tools comply with regulations like ECOA and FHA, stressing the need for transparency in vendor training data and decision-making processes.https://t.co/ZHtnLWoAZS
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) November 26, 2025
Fertig said that whether they’re working with individual brokers or large IMBs, the technology must keep pace with what other large lenders use, especially if they’re just getting into non-QM loans.
“You have to make sure that you know you're not giving them something that is a dinosaur, relative to what they normally go through,” he said. “It's our job and responsibility to make sure that we have a process that's conducive to that. There are a lot of us who are trying hard to do it because my belief system is like, these guys should be doing these loans, because if you're waiting for a 4% conventional rate, you’d better be careful you’re not wishing your life away.”
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