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Purchase And Refinance Loan Guide For The Self Employed

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The Purchase and Refinance Loan Guide for the Self-Employed
A Brief History in Time
Mortgage lending has made some dramatic changes over the past few years and when you include the period beginning in 2000, there have some rather wild swings regarding loan approvals. Mortgage lenders often change lending guidelines to more accommodate consumer demand or to open up a brand new market yet these loans come and go as lenders decide to lend more or lend less. Sometimes it’s the market itself that determines which loan types survive and which do not. If a lender introduces a particular loan program that focuses on a particular niche yet there are no takers, the lender steps back and reevaluates the program, makes some adjustments or pulls the …show more content…

It’s not as difficult to obtain a loan approval as it once was but there are still a few challenges that once did not exist. And those challenges are sometimes even more difficult to overcome as it relates to the self-employed borrower. There are solutions, but understanding how lenders evaluate the self-employed borrowers today is crucial to understand how someone that is self-employed can navigate the approval process.
Are You Really Self-Employed?
For purposes of getting a mortgage loan application approved, lenders have generally accepted guidelines as to who is self-employed and who is not. Specifically, if a borrower receives W2 wages from an employer, that individual is not self-employed. For someone that earns than 25 percent of their annual income from a business, commissions or bonuses, the self-employed moniker applies, or at least the lender evaluates an application in such a manner.
For example, there is an employee that earns a base salary of $1,500 per month but her real income is from the commissions she makes at the department store, which average $3,000 per month for a total average gross monthly income of $4,500. Since her commission income is more than 25 percent of her total, lenders treat her as a self-employed borrower, even though she receives a W2 each year and a pay check on the 1st and 15th. Another example is someone who receives income from a partnership, LLC or corporation when the income, again, is greater than the 25 percent

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