Yes. Portfolio loans are alive and well at banks and credit unions willing to keep loans on their own books. Keeping the loan instead of selling it to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac lets the bank set its own guidelines. That flexibility is the whole point, and it makes portfolio and other non-agency products (hard money included) useful when the borrower or the property falls outside standard agency financing: - Unusual income documentation - A property type the agencies will not touch - A land-and-construction project The tradeoff is cost. Rates run higher, and asset-based options like hard money typically want a large down payment, often in the range of 30 to 40 percent. So ask whether you actually need the non-agency route. If someone is steering you toward hard money because of a credit or income issue, addressing that issue first can open up standard construction or conventional financing that is meaningfully cheaper. Confirm current terms, since these products and their pricing vary a lot by lender. One California note: reasonably priced land to build on is genuinely hard to find in the dense coastal metros, and more realistic in less populated regions like the Central Valley or north of the Bay Area. If you are weighing a non-agency loan, we can pressure-test whether you truly need one, or whether a standard loan gets you there, on a free Roadmap conversation (about 20 minutes) where we run your real numbers.