A mortgage site for people who work for themselves

Who we write for

Sole proprietors, 1099 contractors and freelancers, small-business owners, gig workers, creators and owner-operators: anyone whose income doesn’t arrive on a W-2 and who wants to buy or refinance a home to live in. If you get paid through invoices, platform payouts or carrier settlements, a lender has to work your income out from your deposits, your books or your tax returns. These guides show you how they do it.

Why “The Self-Employed Borrower”

Because that’s you: you earn on your own terms. Most of our readers earn well but show less on their tax returns than they make, and many have already heard “no” from a bank, or expect to. We show you how a lender will actually read your income, before you apply.

How we write

One business owner talking to another. Plain words, real numbers, no bank language.

Each guide starts with a short, straight answer to one question. Then it follows one made-up borrower through the math a lender does, line by line, so you can swap in your own figures. Lender terms like “expense factor” or “debt-to-income ratio” get explained the first time they show up.

What you’ll find here

• Tools: Free calculators to run your own deposits and write-offs before you talk to a lender.

Who checks every guide

Every guide is read and approved by a licensed loan officer before it’s published. Their name, title, NMLS license number and the date they reviewed it sit in the “Reviewed by” card at the end of the guide. You can look up any loan officer’s license on NMLS Consumer Access.

How the figures are checked

Every number in a worked example is worked out from the borrower’s stated figures, and every figure and fact is checked before a licensed loan officer reviews the guide. Rules about how income is counted come from the IRS, Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide and the CFPB. Example borrowers and their figures are labeled as examples, never as a quote or an offer. The full process is on our editorial standards page.