Qualify on the property’s rental income — not your tax returns, not your W-2, not your debt-to-income ratio.
A DSCR loan is business-purpose financing for non-owner-occupied investment property. The lender underwrites the asset, not your paycheck. No 1040s. No employment verification. No DTI calculation.
Most lenders run one DSCR box and decline anything outside it. We’re a non-delegated correspondent — we underwrite in house, we make judgment calls, and we look at files case by case.
A DSCR loan qualifies you on the property’s rental income instead of your personal income. DSCR stands for Debt Service Coverage Ratio — the property’s rent divided by its monthly obligation.
A DSCR of 1.00 means the rent exactly covers the payment. Above 1.00, the property carries itself with room to spare. Below 1.00, it runs negative.
Most lenders stop at 1.00. We go to 0.70.
That means we can finance a property that doesn’t fully cover its own payment — because plenty of good deals don’t, especially in appreciating markets, and especially on a first purchase.
| Minimum DSCR | 0.70 — negative cash flow considered |
|---|---|
| Minimum FICO | 600 |
| Maximum LTV | Up to 85% |
| Minimum loan amount | $70,000 |
| Property types | Single family · 2–4 units · 5–10 units · condo · non-warrantable condo · short-term rental |
| Experience required | None. First-time investors welcome. |
| Prior homeownership | Not required. |
| Prepayment penalty | Zero-prepay option available. Terms customizable. |
| Amortization | Full amortization or interest-only |
| Vesting | LLC or individual |
| States | FL · CO · GA · TX · IL |
These are program minimums and maximums — not a single approval profile. Maximum LTV, minimum FICO, and minimum DSCR interact: the best terms in each row do not all apply to the same file. Send us the scenario and we’ll tell you exactly what yours supports.
These are the guidelines. They are not the whole story — see “When the box doesn’t fit” below.
Most DSCR lenders require you to already own a primary residence. If you rent, or you live with family, you’re declined at the door — regardless of your credit, your reserves, or the quality of the deal.
We don’t require prior homeownership.
You can buy an investment property as your first-ever real estate purchase. You keep renting. The property is non-owner-occupied, it’s held for business purposes, and it qualifies on its own income.
For a lot of investors, this is the difference between starting now and starting in three years.
We’re a non-delegated correspondent lender. We underwrite DSCR files in house. That means we set our own overlays, we can look at a file on its merits, and we can request exceptions and consider them case by case — rather than reading a decline off a matrix.
Here’s what that actually looks like.
A property with a vacant unit and no signed lease is an automatic decline at most lenders — there’s no rent to divide by.
We recently closed one. The unit was vacant, no rental agreement in place. We used the appraiser’s Form 1007 Single-Family Comparable Rent Schedule to establish market rent, and qualified the borrower on that.
The 1007 is standard appraisal work. Most lenders just won’t accept it in place of an executed lease.
Another recent file: as a long-term rental, the property didn’t generate enough income. We could have funded it as negative cash flow — but there was a pricing implication for the borrower.
Instead, we ordered a short-term rental income appraisal alongside the 1007 and qualified on the STR income. Better ratio. Better outcome for the borrower.
If a file is close but the DSCR won’t quite clear, interest-only lowers the qualifying payment. Sometimes that’s the whole gap.
On most loan products, multiple borrowers means you’re underwritten on the lowest mid-score in the file.
On DSCR, we can use the highest. Adding a strong-credit co-borrower helps you here instead of being neutral.
A borrower needed cash out of one property to close on another — with seventeen days to do it.
We closed it. In house, start to finish. On a clean file we can move in as little as ten days.
| DSCR loan | Conventional investment loan | |
|---|---|---|
| Qualifies on | The property’s rental income | Your personal income |
| Tax returns | Not required | Required — typically two years |
| Employment verification | Not required | Required |
| Debt-to-income ratio | Not calculated | Calculated, and it caps you |
| Number of financed properties | Not a hard limiter | Often capped |
| Vesting in an LLC | Standard | Usually not permitted |
| Credit reporting | Business-purpose loans held in an entity typically do not report to personal credit* | Reports to personal credit |
| Regulatory framework | Business-purpose — outside TILA, RESPA/TRID, ATR/QM | Consumer credit — full TILA/RESPA |
* Credit reporting depends on the investor and how the loan is vested. Ask us about your specific scenario — we’ll tell you straight.
Why the last two rows matter more than they look:
If a DSCR loan doesn’t hit your personal credit report, it doesn’t consume your personal DTI. Your next conventional purchase — including a primary residence — isn’t crowded out by it. Investors who plan to scale should be thinking about this on loan number one, not loan number four.
A DSCR loan is made for a business purpose — acquiring or refinancing income-producing property. It is not a consumer mortgage, and it works under a different set of rules.
What that gets you: no income documentation, no DTI cap, LLC vesting, and a far more flexible underwrite.
What it requires:
If you’re looking for a loan on a home you intend to live in, a DSCR loan is the wrong product — and we’ll tell you that rather than write it. We also do conventional, FHA, VA, jumbo, and bank-statement loans. Talk to us and we’ll point you at the right one.
Short list. That’s the point.
Yes. We go down to a 0.70 DSCR, which means the property does not have to fully cover its own payment. Most lenders stop at 1.00.
No. Most DSCR lenders require it. We don’t. You can buy an investment property as your first real estate purchase while you’re still renting.
No. First-time investors are eligible.
Often not — business-purpose loans held in an entity typically don’t report to personal credit. It depends on the investor and how the loan is vested. Ask us about your file specifically.
Yes. We can order a short-term rental income appraisal and qualify on that income.
We can use the appraiser’s Form 1007 rent schedule to establish market rent and qualify you on it.
There’s a zero-prepayment-penalty option, and terms are customizable. Prepay structure affects pricing — we’ll show you the trade-off.
On a clean file, as little as ten days. We recently closed a cash-out in seventeen because the borrower needed it to close another deal.
Yes, and we’d generally recommend it.
Tell us anyway. We underwrite in house and we consider exceptions case by case. We can’t promise an approval — nobody honest can — but we can promise you a real answer from someone who actually reads the file.
Tell us the property, the rent, and the credit score. We’ll tell you whether it works — and if it doesn’t fit the box, whether we can get it done anyway.