Mortgages for Travel Nurses

[Connor Mather]

Lenders,

I am hoping to connect with a lender in NC who understands and also works with travel nurses. For those of you familiar/unfamiliar with how travel nurses are paid I will explain.

Travel nurses taxable hourly rate is usually lower (compared to national rates) between $30-$50/h. Sometimes it will be $30 for the first 8 hours and then $50 for the last 4 hours of the shift. Ultimately this is the pre tax taxable rate that underwriters and lenders care the most about.

The majority of what a travel nurse makes is in their stipend income which is untaxable however often not counted in DTI calculation. For example covid ICU travel nurse contracts have allowed for some nurses to take home 5k a week. However, 4k of that income is through stipends(housing, food, travel reimbursements) and only 1k is taxable w2 income. This makes it look like that nurse effectively makes 40k on a w2 a year when in-fact they might be taking home as much as someone who is making 300k a year in taxable income.

I have yet to find a lender who can help me with this but biggerpockets has never let me down.