Cincinnati’s homebuying market generated $7.6 billion in purchase loans last year, giving the region’s mortgage lenders a massive piece of the local housing puzzle even as buyers continued navigating affordability and financing challenges.
A new Cincinnati Business Courier ranking identifies the 100 lenders behind that activity, based on residential purchase loans originated in 2025. The online list expands well beyond the 25 lenders featured in print, adding 75 more companies to the regional snapshot.
The ranking covers 15 counties across three states
The list’s footprint stretches across five Ohio counties, seven Kentucky counties and three Indiana counties, reflecting how broadly the Cincinnati housing market reaches beyond city limits. The analysis includes residential properties with four or fewer units, rather than apartment buildings and other larger multifamily projects.
The numbers come from Home Mortgage Disclosure Act records, which became more accessible after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced the release of 2025 loan-level data on March 31, 2026. The federal data set covered filings from approximately 4,768 institutions, giving researchers and publishers a detailed way to compare lending activity by market and lender.
What the $7.6 billion figure does not include
This is a purchase-market ranking, not a full accounting of every mortgage product offered in the Cincinnati area. As outlined by the Business Courier’s methodology, refinance loans, cash-out refinancing, home-improvement loans and mortgages for other purposes are excluded, and the publication said it could not independently verify the list’s information.
That makes the ranking most useful as a look at who helped finance home purchases during 2025, rather than as a guide to interest rates, approval odds or customer service. The federal HMDA program describes its records as the most comprehensive publicly available information on mortgage-market activity, but individual buyers still need to compare the terms attached to any specific loan.
