Sachem Capital Corp, the Branford, Connecticut based mortgage REIT that trades under the ticker SACH, is showing a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 51.13 times in its latest reported financials, a figure that on its face looks like a company drowning in debt. The multiple, calculated from total debt of $277.84 million against trailing GAAP EBITDA of roughly $10.92 million, first stood out in data tracked on REIT Research, a Madison Labs research site that compiles leverage figures across the REIT sector.

What the number actually captures is a mismatch between the metric and the business model it is being applied to, rather than a sudden deterioration in Sachem's finances. Sachem does not own buildings that generate rental income and depreciate on a predictable schedule, the kind of operation EBITDA was designed to measure. Instead, it originates, underwrites and services short term loans secured by mortgage liens on residential and commercial properties, earning its income from the spread between what it charges borrowers and what it pays to fund those loans. For a lender like that, interest expense is not an add back candidate sitting above operating profit, it is close to the core of the business itself. Stripping it out to calculate EBITDA, as the formula requires, can shrink the denominator to a sliver of what a conventional operating company would report, and Sachem's own disclosed financial history shows EBITDA figures in recent periods running from the low six figures down to roughly $61,870 in one period, alongside swings in net income that included a loss of $39.57 million in one fiscal year and profits exceeding $20 million in others. Divide a debt load in the hundreds of millions by an EBITDA figure that small and an extreme multiple follows almost mechanically, independent of whether the underlying loan book is performing.

For investors, the practical takeaway is less about dismissing leverage concerns outright and more about choosing metrics suited to how mortgage REITs actually operate. Sachem's own reported debt to book capital ratio stands at 65.86 percent, a more conventional gauge of balance sheet leverage for a finance company, and its total equity of $174.94 million against total assets of $460.05 million gives a tangible sense of the capital cushion behind its loan portfolio. The company's operating cash flow payout ratio of 70.46 percent is another figure that speaks more directly to dividend sustainability than a debt to EBITDA screen does. Read in isolation, a 51x multiple on a stock screener could prompt a reflexive pass from investors scanning for red flags, without the context that mortgage REITs as a category routinely report FFO and AFFO as not applicable or not meaningful, precisely because their earnings profile differs from equity REITs that generate steady rental cash flow.

Sachem was founded in 2010 and has built its lending book primarily in the Northeastern United States and Florida, financing acquisition, renovation and development projects for real estate professionals and property owners. As a REIT, it must distribute at least 90 percent of its taxable income to shareholders, and its dividend history shows a pattern of quarterly payouts stretching back several years, with the most recent declarations in 2026 following its established cadence. Recent coverage has also turned to corporate developments beyond the leverage math, including a Seeking Alpha piece examining how a proposed merger could affect Sachem's common stock, its baby bonds and its preferred shares, and a company announcement referencing a pending asset contribution transaction alongside its second quarter 2026 results.

Broader markets were mixed in the session, with chipmakers and technology names including Texas Instruments and Broadcom posting notable gains while Accenture declined sharply, and major cryptocurrencies including bitcoin and ethereum trading lower. Small, thinly capitalized mortgage REITs like Sachem tend to move more on loan portfolio performance and short term rate spreads than on swings in large cap technology stocks or digital assets, and nothing in the current market backdrop points directly to Sachem's lending book.

Investors watching Sachem from here are likely to focus on the mechanics the company itself has flagged rather than the EBITDA multiple, including the outcome of the merger discussion detailed by Seeking Alpha, updates on the asset contribution transaction referenced in Sachem's August announcement, and whether future quarterly results show continued stability in operating cash flow relative to the dividend it has been declaring. Any assessment of Sachem's actual financial health, market participants following the name suggest, will rest more on those disclosures and on metrics like debt to book capital than on a leverage ratio whose size is substantially a function of which earnings figure sits in the denominator.