Mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration are known as FHA mortgages. Many people seek them because they can be relatively easy to get with low down payments. For fixer-upper home buyers, the FHA also offers good options to finance a home plus renovations with down payments as low as 3.5%.
Now, what if you’re hoping to get your FHA mortgage based on self-employment income?
It’s possible to do. The key is to show the lender that your income is dependable. This means projecting your ability to faithfully pay back your loan, month by month, for at least three years after closing on the loan.
What Documents Does the Lender Need?
Let’s get straight to the document list. The lender will ask for the following documentation:
- Show at least two years of income as a self-employed worker. Pull up your individual tax returns with attached tax schedules for the past two years.
- Be prepared to show your profit-and-loss statements as well, including this year’s year-to-date P&L statement.
- Be ready to show a trend of earning at least what you earned in a similar kind of work before you became self-employed.
- Or, at the very least, earnings that haven’t dropped more than 20% over the time period that the underwriter examines. As a general rule, a lender wants to find that the applicant’s income is stable or increasing.
- If the business is a corporation or S corporation, you’ll submit a business credit report. Lenders assess the health of a business and the outlook for other businesses like yours.
Ideally, you and your business earnings should both be on an upward trend. The lender will check to see if the applicant is taking large owner’s draws, and how much that could affect the health of the business. The lender won’t approve the application if the business has serious income declines — even if the current debt-to-income ratio meets the FHA guidelines!
Speaking of debt, expenses like car payments are treated as recurring debt and will be weighed against the applicant’s income. The lender looks at bank account statements to add up recurring debt.
Who Is “Self-Employed”?
Self-employed borrowers are contractors, freelancers and people with earnings from a business which they own. You can demonstrate ownership with your business documents, such as local licensing, an IRS notice assigning the EIN number for your business, and your state registration.
Not all “self-employed” borrowers own their entire businesses. If they hold anything from a 25% to a 100% ownership interest, the FHA considers them self-employed.
The business could be a sole proprietorship or a partnership. Or it could be a corporation, a limited liability company, or an S corporation.
If the applicant is a part-owner with a 25% interest or more, the percentage must be documented for the lender. Proof can be tax returns that specify the percentage. Otherwise, the lender has to have proof of the percentage from the company’s accountant.
What Is Income Stability?
An applicant usually demonstrates “stability” by showing past employment led up to the current self-employment. In other words, self-employment is part of the career evolution of the applicant. Previous degrees, training, and word all lead up to where the person is now. This is the profile of a person whose self-employed status is solid, and an indicator of earning power.
Even if the loan applicant often changes jobs, if it’s the same type of work with increasing pay or benefits, income stability is there. So the lender isn’t looking so much at whether the job is stable. The question is whether the earnings are.
This can get tricky, because the lender can’t accept unstable sources of income when calculating an applicant’s income versus debt. The key? Your income must look set to continue for the next 3+ years.
What If There Are Breaks In Work History?
If you had no earnings coming in for a month or more in the most recent two full years, that’s a gap in employment. Here’s what the lender looks for if you’ve had a break in income of at least one month.
- No income for one month or more: Be ready to explain the gap. Did you take courses or perform military service? Submit transcripts or discharge documents to the mortgage rep.
- No income for six months or more: After what’s called an extended absence, you need to show stable income upon returning to a job for at least six months. Show a documented two-year work history before the break, too.
- No income for a few years: You’ll be fine with the lender’s rules if you took several years away from work to raise children before going back to work.
Helpful news for applicants with a Covid-related decline or gap in earnings: Under a letter published by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in July 2022, lenders now have extra flexibility when calculating income eligibility for people whose income took a Covid-related hit. Applicants must have a stable income currently.
What Will the Lender Count as Income?
Salaries or wages count as income. There are other forms of income, too:
- Retirement account withdrawals, pensions, annuities, or Social Security (less taxes) — if draws will continue over the next three years.
- Vehicle or business expense payments not spent on actual business needs.
- Rents from investment properties.
- Royalties.
- Alimony.
- Bonuses and overtime pay, if they normally occur.
- Home-flipping profits.
Notes: Tax Schedule B interest and dividend income counts if there’s a two-year pattern of income that will continue. Schedule D capital gains count as income only if they have formed a constant, three-year pattern.
Benefits that expire in the first three full years of the mortgage are deemed a “compensating” factor rather than effective income. Lenders have discretion to weigh “compensating” factors (or not). If you’re on the borderline in some way, lender discretion might nudge your application over the line to an approval.
Does Part-Time or Seasonal Income Count?
Yes!
First, note that many self-employed people do not have 40-hour work weeks, and that’s fine.
Also note that part-time and seasonal work over two years — or even less than two years so far — does count as income for an FHA loan.
Seasonal income can be used in FHA loan eligibility. Seasonal employment might be something like tour guiding, camp counseling, crop growing and harvesting, school bus driving, or holiday retail work. The earner must submit documentation showing work at the same job for two years, and the expectation of going back to the job for the coming season.
The borrower will be asked to show dependable plans to continue the work in the future. But lenders cannot rule out borrowers who rely on seasonal or part-time work.
What About People Who Earn Income Through Commissions?
Under FHA lending rules, commission income works fine. The lender uses the applicant’s average earnings over the past two-year period.
The applicant just needs to show the newest pay stub, along with copies of two years of signed tax returns.
Less than one year of commission earning won’t count as a stable source of income. If the applicant has between one and two years of commission earnings and the income flow will likely continue, that should be OK.
If the applicant is paying work expenses out of pocket and not being repaid, that gets subtracted when the lender looks at qualifying income.
Why Is Two Years of Employment So Important?
The FHA knows that most startup businesses do not make it past their first few years. So, the default rule is that the FHA mortgage applicant must have at least two years working for the business. Two years of income is a “stable and effective” pattern, for the purpose of FHA loan approval.
Have you been self-employed at least two years? It’s a threshold question if you’re seeking an FHA loan.
Less than two years? Then you must prove:
- At least two prior years of successful employment in a similar line of work.
Or
- A combination of one year of employment and formal education or training in a similar line of work.
Less than one year? Then don’t apply yet. The lender can’t say yes. Build up your self-employment history, then apply. And know that you can get your FHA mortgage based on self-employment income.
Best Wishes on Your FHA Loan Application. A Couple More Notes Before We Let You Go.
While the FHA loan can be a wonderful opportunity for a home buyer with limited funds for a down payment, it does require that buyer to offset the lender’s risk by paying private mortgage insurance with the monthly mortgage payment.
But there’s an FHA mortgage upside, too. FHA-backed mortgages are assumable loans. This means if you transfer the deed later on, the new title holder can opt to keep the loan on the house under the interest rate you originally got. This is a real benefit if interest rates go up after your closing date.
OK, that’s all for now. Best wishes on your FHA mortgage application, and on your business!
Supporting References
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: Borrower Employment and Employment Related Income (PDF).
U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS): About Form 2106, Employee Business Expenses.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: Mortgagee Letter 2022-09 – Calculating Effective Income After a Reduction or Loss of Income for Borrowers Affected by Presidentially-Declared COVID-19 National Emergency (Jul. 7, 2022).
And as linked.
Photo credits: George Milton and cottonbro, via Pexels.