Kestrel Lending is a hard money mortgage broker for Texas real estate investors. We do not lend our own money. We shop your deal to a vetted panel of 20+ wholesale hard money lenders, push them to compete on rate and terms, and place the loan that fits your project best. One application, multiple offers, term sheet in 24 hours. Get your rate in 24 hours.
Kestrel Lending was founded in 2026 by Humberto Marquez, a Houston real estate operator who runs a property management and real estate services company in the Houston metro. Before Kestrel, Humberto spent years acquiring, rehabbing, and managing investment properties across Texas. The same question kept coming up from investors in his network: "Which lender should I use for this deal?"
The honest answer was always the same: it depends. It depends on the property type, the loan amount, your experience, and how fast you need to close. No single hard money lender is the best fit for every deal. But most investors only know one or two lenders, and they take whatever terms they are offered without comparing.
Humberto built Kestrel to fix that. Instead of pointing people to one lender, he built a brokerage with relationships across the wholesale lending market, so every borrower gets competing offers on every deal. The result: better rates, better leverage, and a backup plan if the first lender falls through.
A direct lender has one set of guidelines, one rate sheet, and one appetite for risk. If your deal fits their box, great. If it does not, you start over somewhere else. A broker works differently.
We maintain active relationships with 20+ wholesale Texas hard money lenders who price loans specifically for broker-submitted files. When you send us a deal, we underwrite it internally first. If the numbers work, we package the file and submit it to the two or three lenders whose criteria fit best. They compete. You pick the winner.
This model works because wholesale lenders price aggressively for brokers who send them clean, pre-underwritten files. They spend less on marketing and underwriting, and they pass that savings through in the form of lower rates and higher leverage. Our clients regularly close at the same or better all-in cost compared to going direct, even with our broker fee visible on the settlement statement.
Our compensation comes from lender-paid origination points. When a lender funds your loan, they pay us a fee out of the points charged at closing. This fee appears as a line item on your settlement statement, in plain sight. There are no hidden markups, no yield spread premiums buried in the rate, and no upfront fees. If your loan does not close, you owe us nothing.
We publish this because transparency is rare in hard money lending. Most borrowers have no idea how their lender or broker gets paid. We think you should know exactly where every dollar goes before you sign. That is how you build trust with fix and flip investors who close multiple deals per year.
We work with a curated panel of 20+ wholesale hard money lenders across Texas. Each lender has been vetted for reliability, speed, and fair dealing. The panel covers every major loan type: fix and flip loans, bridge loans, rental DSCR loans, new construction financing, cash-out refinances, and transactional funding.
Lender appetite shifts constantly. One month a lender prices aggressively on Houston flips; the next month they tighten up because their fund is overexposed to Harris County. We track these shifts in real time so your deal always goes to the lender who actually wants to fund it today, not the one who wanted it last quarter.
We are not a direct lender. We do not fund loans from our own balance sheet. We are not a bank, not a credit union, and not a fintech platform. We are an independent loan broker focused exclusively on business-purpose loans for investment property. Texas does not require a mortgage license for this type of brokering, and we stay strictly inside that lane.
We do not broker consumer loans. Every loan we place is secured by non-owner-occupied property for a business purpose: flips, rentals, bridge financing, or construction. If you need a mortgage for a home you plan to live in, that requires a different type of lender, and we will point you to one.
We also do not charge upfront fees, application fees, or processing fees. You pay nothing until your loan closes. Check our current rates and use the loan calculator to estimate your total cost before you apply.
Humberto Marquez is the founder of Kestrel Lending and a Houston-based real estate operator. He runs a property management and real estate services company that manages residential investment properties across the Houston metro. His experience on the investor side of the closing table, buying distressed properties, managing rehabs, and placing tenants, is what drives the way Kestrel underwrites deals. We evaluate projects the way an investor would, not the way a bank would.
Humberto is based in Houston, TX. Kestrel Lending serves investors statewide across Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, and every Texas market in between.
Ready to see what your next deal qualifies for? Get your rate in 24 hours. One application, competing offers, no upfront fees.
One application, multiple Texas hard money lenders competing to fund it, and a term sheet within 24 hours. No upfront fees, no hard credit pull to get a quote.
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