Ex-FHA chief Frank Cassidy returns to Walker & Dunlop
The former HUD housing chief returns to the private sector to advise clients navigating agency financing and shifting policy.
Frank Cassidy, who served as HUD’s Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Administration commissioner until resigning June 1, has rejoined Walker & Dunlop as a senior managing director. He will advise clients on FHA and government-sponsored enterprise financing strategies as they navigate a shifting policy and capital-markets environment.
Why it matters. Cassidy oversaw an FHA insurance portfolio of roughly $2 trillion across single-family, multifamily, and healthcare mortgages before returning to the private sector. His move places a recent architect of federal housing-finance policy on the advisory side at one of the largest agency lenders — a signal of how closely policy and private capital are now intertwined for developers relying on agency debt.
The numbers. Cassidy joined HUD in April 2025 and was confirmed by the Senate in December 2025 before resigning this summer. He previously spent nearly six years at Walker & Dunlop, from August 2019 to around 2024, with earlier stops at Berkeley Point Capital, Newmark, and Oppenheimer. The return reunites him with a firm he knows well, now on the client-advisory side of the same agency programs he oversaw in government.
What’s next. At Walker & Dunlop, Cassidy will counsel borrowers on structuring FHA and GSE deals at a moment when agency programs remain the backbone of multifamily and affordable-housing finance. He framed the return as a chance to keep supporting “the creation and preservation of housing.” The hire strengthens the firm’s agency-advisory bench for the developers and owners across the national market who depend on agency debt.