Income History: 2 Years, Multiple Jobs

[Kyler J Sloan]

I am about to apply for a mortgage for another STR.

However, I am also about to switch jobs. 

Will I have problems getting a mortgage if I switch jobs? -- Or, is it okay if the salaries are equivalent and I have the 2 year history? 

Thanks! 

[Sasha Mohammed]

depends how you're qualifying for the mortgage. If you're buying the house using traditional fannie/freddie loans for investment properties vs if you're using non-qm financing (say a DSCR loan), the answers will vary.

DSCR loan wouldn't look at your income anyway, so a job change would be a non-issue.

For traditional financing, the rule for multiple jobs is that you would have had to held both for 2 years consistently. if there's no gap in employment between the job you're leaving and the one you're starting, and you are full-time hours, and no weird stuff like commissions, bonus, overtime, etc.... you should be fine. 

IF you do have the "weird stuff", you would have to do a 2 year history of earnings breaking out each type of income (old and new job, break out for each: bonus, OT, commissions, etc.) and likely the underwriter would do an average of each bucket to determine the most conservative approach to each bucket (again: base income, bonus, OT, etc.). 

Also consider if you're switching, and say you make a bonus at your current place.... even if you have a history of bonus received, but you haven't received the bonus yet from the new place (as you're just starting out there), its highly likely the u/w would NOT give you credit for bonus income at all. 

All of this to say, underwriting income calculations are subjective to some degree. your absolute best bet if you are qualifying full-doc is to talk to an experienced loan officer before making any big life changes like this.