08/19/2026
Are you a self-employed business owner in COS? Are you ready to look to see what you qualify for talk to my friend Kathie Fish.
If you're self-employed, your write-offs might be quietly working against your mortgage. Here's what's actually going on. 🚌
For a traditional mortgage, we're usually looking at the following
Your tax returns
How long you've been self-employed
Your business income and expenses
Whether the income looks stable and likely to continue
Your write-offs do matter here. A write-off lowers your taxable income, which is great at tax time. It can also lower the income we use to qualify you for a mortgage.
That doesn't mean you did anything wrong. It means your tax strategy and your homebuying plan need to be looked at together, as a whole- not one at the expense of the other.
Here's where I get protective of my self-employed peeps:
Too many loan originators tell business owners to stop taking legitimate deductions just to qualify more easily for a full-documentation loan. It sounds responsible. It sounds like good advice.
It isn't, once you look at the real cost.
The rate difference between a full-documentation loan and a bank statement, asset utilization, or asset depletion loan is usually a few hundred dollars a month for well-qualified borrowers. The difference in your tax liability could be tens of thousands of dollars. Sometimes six figures.
I will probably never save a client as much through a slightly lower rate as a good CPA can save them through smart, legitimate tax planning.
That doesn't mean an alt-doc loan is always the answer. It means we run the actual numbers before anyone asks you to give up deductions just to fit a conventional box.
That's the job: work with your CPA, look at the whole financial picture, compare the real cost, and structure the mortgage around how you actually earn income — not the other way around.
Traditional documentation may work for you. A different loan program may make more sense. Or we may just need a roadmap before you're ready to buy. All three are fine answers.
You don't need to apologize for owning a business. You don't need to decode your tax returns alone. You're allowed to ask how the numbers actually work.
No pressure, just a plan built around the way you earn income. 🚌
Are you self-employed and wondering how this applies to you? Drop a comment or send me a message — happy to walk through it.
