Culture and Community

Home | Our Responsibility | Culture and Community

Arbor is committed to diversity and inclusion, employee satisfaction, and human rights. We also strive to develop safe and sustainable products and services.

Affordable Housing

Affordable housing and the extension of financing to customers investing in affordable housing is not a new concept for Arbor. In fact, Arbor has, for more than two decades, funded affordable loans and has the expertise required to execute across a variety of lending platforms and programs. Arbor was also an early and active participant in our agency partners,’ Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, “green” lending programs, which require willing borrowers to make improvements to their properties that help reduce energy and water consumption and lower utility costs to tenants. Furthermore, Arbor has made a commitment to educating its employees and engaging with its clients to make known the newly revamped “green” lending programs offered by our agency partners.

In addition to our mission-driven business, we also support affordable housing by lending on multifamily assets available to renters with very low incomes, defined as units lent to renters with income at lower than 50% of the area median Income (AMI). In 2024, over 14.65% of the units we financed fit that criterion.

In 2024, our Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)-defined mission-driven funding was 82.95% of our agency volume, up from 70% in 2021, making us a leader compared to our peers and all other agency lenders.

Nurturing Talent

Our people remain at the core of who we are and how we define ourselves, and so we are proud to have partnered with two organizations to actively support the recruitment, development, and retention of diverse professionals across our organization.

Arbor has continued to grow its partnership with Project Destined (“PD”), a real estate finance-focused internship program, providing minority college students with the ability to gain and fine tune technical, financial and leadership skills and which, as a by-product, gives us the opportunity to source additional diverse talent. Six talented Arbor employees, representing several different areas of our business, represented Arbor as mentors from 2022-2024.

Arbor, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, and Project Destined partnered to host educational sessions led by Project Destined as well as three virtual panel sessions focused on exploring the role of women in real estate finance. Following these educational sessions, participants attended an in-person panel that offered interactive networking and breakout sessions to home in on the soft skills highlighted during the prior sessions.

Additionally, Arbor continues to participate with Future Housing Leaders (“FHL”), which is a Fannie Mae-led recruiting service that helps companies create a more diverse workforce through intentional sourcing and recruiting.

We look forward to nurturing and evolving these partnerships over time, helping to shape future leaders from a variety of backgrounds with the active participation of our existing employees and the support of management.

Arbor also encourages our employees to support industry-focused organizations and committees that are committed to creating, launching, and managing inclusive initiatives within our space. Such organizations include Commercial Real Estate Women Network (CREW) and the CRE Finance Council (CREFC) Women’s Network.

The 2023 Project Destined team review their business plan presentattion

Community Impact

Arbor actively encourages its employees to support the communities in which we live and operate. Each year, Arbor and its employees support local food banks, clothing drives, hospitals and medical research, and community-based organizations focused on the welfare of families and children.

As part of Arbor’s support of volunteerism and philanthropy amongst our employees, Arbor introduced a series of volunteer activities across its offices in 2023. Further, we continue to proudly support our clients and counterparties in their charitable efforts.