Habitat Capital

Through Habitat Capital, Habitat helps our U.S. affiliates build homes and provide affordable mortgages. Habitat Capital creates and provides financial services and capital that enable equitable homeownership opportunities and affordable housing solutions for underserved people. By helping to remove barriers to homeownership, Habitat Capital helps foster vibrant and diverse communities.  

The need

The need for affordable homeownership only continues to grow. Though Habitat for Humanity International provided lending support to affiliates for years prior, we officially established Habitat Capital in 2017 as a community development financial institution to address critical barriers, including:

• The rising cost of land and construction.
• Increased regulatory complexity of mortgage lending.
• Insufficient financing and capital market options tailored for low-income homebuyers.

Our approach

Habitat Capital supports Habitat affiliates’ work as affordable-mortgage lenders, homebuilders, sellers and partners for housing and community solutions. We serve a network of independently operated Habitat affiliates working in communities across all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

Habitat Capital’s work:

• Provides low-cost, flexible capital to support affiliates’ work as nonprofit real estate developers and homebuilders.
• Supports the development of affordable mortgage financing and secondary market options.
• Helps affiliates produce and offer more compliant, higher-quality mortgages.
• Increases our affiliates’ ability to serve more households.

Habitat Capital comprises two primary lines of business: our mortgage origination platform and our commercial lending and mortgage financing.

Mortgage origination platform

Our mortgage origination platform supports Habitat affiliates in their work as residential mortgage lenders by assisting with the processing, underwriting and closing functions of the mortgage origination process. The platform’s technology — combined with access to seasoned, licensed mortgage professionals — provides affiliates an efficient, low-cost solution to produce higher quality mortgages for low- and moderate-income families and underserved communities.

Commercial lending and mortgage financing

We extend short-, medium- and long-term capital, allowing Habitat affiliates to acquire land, finance home construction, and partner with communities to build or preserve affordable housing and community facilities.

We offer several types of products, including:

• Predevelopment loans.
• Acquisitions loans.
• Construction loans.
• Mini-perm loans.
• Bridge loans.
• Working capital.
• New market tax credits.

In addition, we work to provide permanent financing through programs that enable third-party financing, mortgage loan securitization and sale.

Our impact

For more than 20 years, Habitat for Humanity International, through Habitat Capital and related entities, has provided more than 820 loans to more than 350+ Habitat affiliates awarding more than US$400 million in loans, supporting more than 15,000 households achieving affordable homeownership.

As a recipient or potential recipient of federal financial assistance, this organization is prohibited from discriminating against program participants because of their race, color, national origin, disability or age.