Uniondale, NY Arbor Realty Trust, Inc., a real estate investment trust and national direct lender specializing in loan origination and servicing for multifamily, single-family rental (SFR) portfolios and other diverse commercial real estate assets, has appointed Brian Blue as managing director, FHA production.

Blue will be responsible for overseeing Arbor’s Federal Housing Administration (FHA) multifamily lending operations, ensuring effective deal management, process refinement and due diligence across the firm’s FHA portfolio. He will play a key role in managing the scalability of Arbor’s FHA platform to support increased volume.

“Brian brings two decades of experience in asset management and underwriting of both affordable and market-rate multifamily housing utilizing FHA, LIHTC and Structured Finance executions,” said John Caulfield, COO, agency lending, Arbor Realty Trust. “His expertise in these areas will help support our strategy to significantly increase our FHA loan production.”

Prior, Blue served as executive vice president and chief underwriter at R4 Capital and R4 Capital Funding, overseeing the firm’s underwriting of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) and tax-exempt bond financing. Before that, he served as senior asset manager at Recap Real Estate Advisors and vice president of asset management at a Boston-based structured finance lender. Blue spent the beginning of his real estate career at Arbor as an analyst and, eventually, an asset manager.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with minors in Economics and History from Bucknell University.