Leslie Duchene

Leslie is a Managing Director and FHA Chief Underwriter for M and T Realty Capital Corporation. In her role, she is responsible for credit/risk oversight, compliance, quality control, budgeting, and team management for the day-to-day underwriting activities and personnel for the FHA division. She is located in Denver, Colorado. Prior to joining MTRCC, Leslie was the Managing Director and FHA Program Manager for CBRE’s FHA Lending Platform where she was responsible for driving production growth, overseeing the FHA multifamily and healthcare underwriting teams, and ensuring connectivity across the FHA platform. During her roughly 14-year career at CBRE, Ms. Duchene helped grow and lead the Platform as Chief Underwriter since 2009. Prior to CBRE, Leslie was the Chief Underwriter for AmeriSphere Mortgage Finance, now known as NorthMarq, overseeing the company’s underwriting and credit risk functions for the FHA division based in Denver, Colorado. Leslie helped start the FHA-insured division for AmeriSphere in October 2006 which was then an affiliate of NorthMarq Capital. Ms. Duchene has nearly 28 years of commercial real estate finance and Title Insurance experience and more than 25 years of specializing in FHA Insured finance for multifamily and healthcare. Her experience includes all facets of FHA financing for multifamily and healthcare including affordable, LIHTC, construction, and substantial/moderate rehabilitation. She has been a HUD invited panelist, has served on Lender Advisory Boards, and works with the MBA on key working groups affecting FHA-insured multifamily and healthcare topics. She was a key author of the MBA Davis Bacon White Paper issued in October 2019. Additionally, Ms. Duchene was a key advocate for the recent HUD policy change for underwriting changes for large loans having received the only waiver to the underwriting parameters for large loans until the new policy was established and providing significant detail and structure to MBA to advocate for support of the change.