Qualifying with rental income from Airbnb

 Loan Guidelines, Residential Mortgage  Comments Off on Qualifying with rental income from Airbnb
Nov 202017
 

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By G. Steven Bray

With the growing popularity of Airbnb and other short term rental options, Freddie Mac has updated its conventional loan guidelines to allow you to use that rental income to qualify for a mortgage. However, the conditions for inclusion are rather tight.

To use short-term rental income for qualifying, you must have a two-year history of receiving it as documented on Schedule E of your tax return. Freddie contends that short-term rental income tends to fluctuate, so a historical view is needed. You can expect Freddie to take the lower amount or an average of the two years as qualifying income. Also note that short-term rental income for your primary residence, like renting out your home during SWSX, will not count as qualifying income even if you do it every year.

Freddie announced one other significant change to its guidelines for rental income. If you don’t have at least one year of investment property experience, Freddie will limit the amount of rental income that can count as qualifying income to 30% of the net rental income from your investment property. Freddie says the limit addresses the risk that rental income is a new type of income for the borrower.

Freddie says the changes are effective Feb 9th of next year, but some lenders may implement them earlier.