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Known for beer, cheese, and introducing Harley-Davidson motorcycles to the world, Milwaukee is a city of both tradition and transition. Despite slow population and job growth and wide homeownership gaps, it holds significant opportunities for mortgage originators and real estate agents who know where to look.
Where do the lending opportunities lie in Milwaukee, and how can housing professionals in this market use data to grow their businesses? Read our analysis below to find out.
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The United States is far from a uniform mortgage market. It’s made up of more than 84,400 census tracts, 925 core-based statistical areas (CBSAs), and over 390 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), and because each is unique, we forecast mortgage opportunity at the census-tract level. That allows lenders to use local data to make localized decisions. Since 2010, iEmergent’s forecast has outperformed most models designed to predict U.S. mortgage originations, maintaining an accuracy rate of over 90%.
Home to 1.6 million people across 550,000 households, the Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI, MSA has an overall homeownership rate of 60.4% and a median household income of $82,431. There is a 35.9% minority population, with the largest groups being Black (16.3%) and Hispanic (11.6%).
Manufacturing remains a key economic driver, employing 16% of the local workforce. Perhaps related, the Milwaukee metro has slower population and job growth compared to over two dozen studied peer major metro areas, which has downstream effects on housing and homeownership.
In Milwaukee, our 2026 projections show 35,739 combined purchase and refinance loans, amounting to $9.42 billion in total volume with an average loan size of $263,595.
By visualizing our forecast data for 2026 purchase and refinance loans in the Milwaukee market by census tract, you can see that more loans originate away from the urban core.
In the Milwaukee MSA, the lender with the most combined purchase and refi loan dollars in 2024 was Landmark Credit Union, a local depository. Unlike many markets we analyze, local lenders held most of the top spots for both loan dollars and loan count.
From 2023 to 2027, total dollar volume for purchase and refinance originations in Milwaukee are forecast to grow from $5.4 billion to $9.4 billion, a 73% increase. The increase can be attributed to 14,100 more loans over that same period.
This growth, however, is not expected to continue. From 2026 to 2031, the Milwaukee market is expected to grow at a slower rate than the U.S. as a whole.
iEmergent’s Mortgage Velocity Index (MVI) compares a market’s rate of growth in loans over the next five years to the growth rate of the overall U.S. market. An MVI of 1 means a market is growing on pace with national market growth, and Milwaukee has a 0.39 MVI.
In the Milwaukee MSA, 35.9% of the population (and 29.4% of households) are from racial/ethnic minority groups. Homeownership gaps for these groups are large, with the non-Hispanic white homeownership rate (70%) more than double that of Black households (27.7%).
A 2020 study by the Center for Economic Development at the University of Milwaukee found Milwaukee ranked 49th among the 50 largest metros for Black homeownership. Disturbingly, Black homeownership in Milwaukee is lower than it was 50 years ago, and the Black homeownership gap is the widest it has been since 1970.
Non-Hispanic white households make up 70.6% of households in the Milwaukee market but accounted for 79.9% of loans in 2024. While the penetration rate for Asian, Black, and Hispanic borrowers has improved in the last few years, it still trails behind population percentages.
If nothing changes, our forecast shows that lending to borrowers of color will grow 56% between 2023 and 2027, compared to the overall market growth rate of 73%. This means that as things stand, most of the growth will be to non-Hispanic white borrowers.
Black and Hispanic households in Milwaukee remain concentrated in areas with lower home values. This geographic concentration highlights an opportunity for lenders to develop place-based custom credit programs aimed at expanding access to homeownership.
Owned Household Value
While diverse lending and low- to moderate-income (LMI) lending are distinct initiatives, the two often have significant overlap. In the Milwaukee MSA, 35.4% of census tracts are LMI tracts, above the national average of 28.8%.
LMI Census Tracts LMI tracts are in red; non-LMI tracts are in blue
Lending to LMI borrowers accounts for about 7.5% of loan dollars and 15% of loan count in the market, which is lower than other markets we’ve analyzed. This number is expected to stay flat in our 2026 forecast.
Loans to LMI borrowers are spread throughout the market:
Milwaukee’s mortgage market tells a story of both challenge and opportunity. Persistent homeownership gaps and uneven lending patterns remain, yet the potential for growth is strong—especially for lenders that can identify and engage with the right communities.
iEmergent’s data and tools help lenders in markets like Milwaukee: