Regardless of your profession, if you enjoy working for yourself and want to achieve the American dream of homeownership, use the following tips to when applying for a mortgage:Clean up your Finances
Banks that offer mortgages to self employed consumers will highly scrutinize business financials. This means that your personal and business accounts must be separate and that you’ll need to minimize the amount of deductions you take over the course of 12 months prior to your application.
Make sure you’ve kept good financial records that are ready to be presented to the mortgage broker.
Apply for an Alternative Loan
Standard mortgages are often hard to come by for the self employed millennial, which is why some banks are offering alternative financing.
Similar to the “no doc” loans of a decade ago, alternative loans use different income verification methods for the self employed. This process involves examining 12 months worth of bank statements against the profit and loss statements for the same time period. A cash flow analysis is created to determine suitability for obtaining a mortgage.
The Basics that You’ll Need
Like any other buyer, self employed individuals will need to provide specific requirements to the bank during the mortgage approval process. Those can include:
- Bank statements - Both personal and business, bank statements will show that you have the necessary funds to pay the down payment and initial monthly payment.
- Profit and Loss statement - A profit and loss statement is essential to creating an analysis for mortgage approval.
- Proof of business formation - If your business is formed as an LLC or corporation, you’ll need to provide proof as well.
- Solid credit history - In most cases, self employed consumers will need a credit score of at least 680 to qualify for a mortgage.
- Sizable down payment - Banks often consider self employed people more of a risk for mortgage lending and they’ll require a down payment of around 20 percent.
While obtaining a mortgage as a self employed millennial is difficult, it isn’t impossible. The right amount of research combined with careful planning and record keeping will help make the process much easier.
