For self-employed and complex-income borrowers
You built your income. Here is how a lender reads it.
Plain-language guides and worked examples, written from the guidelines lenders use. The first four are in progress, and each will carry the date we last checked it. No account to create. No application to fill out.
If you own a business, freelance, or get paid in more than one way, a lender will read your file through rules most borrowers never see. This library will show you the rules first, in the order they tend to come up on a file.
| 03/02 · Client payment, Harlow Co. | 4,800.00 | Counted |
| 03/06 · Transfer from savings | 2,000.00 | Excluded |
| 03/11 · Client payment, Ortega LLC | 3,150.00 | Counted |
| 03/19 · Card deposit, batch | 1,240.00 | Counted |
| 03/27 · Owner contribution | 5,000.00 | Excluded |
Sample data.
Why we wrote this
Most advice on self-employed mortgages was written to capture a lead.
Search for self-employed mortgage advice and you get lender blogs, lead forms, and rate ads. The rules behind most of it, the agency guidelines lenders hand their underwriters, are public, long, and written for people who read them all day.
We read them all day. Adeft Inc. is building an AI-native processing department for wholesale mortgage brokers: our agents will do the file work on self-employed loans, and a licensed processor will approve every outbound action. Building that means learning where these files stall: a K-1 that changes how ownership is counted, a deposit that gets excluded, a letter that explains the wrong thing. We write that down here.
Written from the source
Where a guide rests on a published guideline, it cites the section so you can read the original. Where the rule is a lender's own, the guide says so and walks through a common version of it.
Checked before it goes live
Each guide is checked against the guideline it rests on before it is published. Where a licensed mortgage professional reviews a guide, they will be named on it with their NMLS ID, so you can check the license yourself.
Kept current
Guidelines change. Each guide will show the date we last checked it against the current version.
Start here
Worked examples, not tips.
Each guide will take a realistic file, show the math a lender would do, and explain the rule behind the math.
01 · Bank statements
How 24 months of deposits become one monthly number
A sample business account, deposit by deposit, under a typical bank-statement program. What gets counted, what gets excluded, and how an expense factor (the share of deposits a lender assumes went to running the business, often 50%) changes the result. Offered by some lenders, on their own terms.
In progress02 · K-1s
The 25% line: what changes when you own a quarter of the business
Below 25%, most lenders do not treat you as self-employed. At 25% and above, they do, and the document list grows. What changes on the file, and why. A sample K-1, annotated.
In progress03 · Letters of explanation
Writing a letter an underwriter will accept
Underwriters ask for a letter when something on the file does not line up. The question they are actually asking, and a three-part structure that answers it. Shown before and after.
In progress04 · Entity and timing
How your business type shows up on a mortgage file
Sole proprietorship, S corp, partnership: how each is read, and why the year you change one matters. General explanation only. Your CPA and a licensed loan originator should weigh your specifics.
In progress
Borrower interviews
We are interviewing self-employed borrowers about their mortgage stories.
20 minutes, on video or phone, with a founder. It is research, not an application or advice. We ask before we record. Your name is not given to any lender or broker. Nothing to prepare, and no pitch, because there is nothing here to sell you.
You will talk with Jeremiah, our co-founder, who began as a mortgage loan originator and now builds software. Bought recently, walked away partway, or still deciding: all three stories help.
We keep your contact details only to schedule and follow up on the interview. Privacy policy.
What we will ask
What you were asked for, what took the longest, what nobody explained, and what you would tell a friend who is about to start.
What we will not do
Ask for documents or account numbers. Tell you whether you qualify. Offer you a loan. Give your name to any lender or broker. Record the call without asking first. If you ask about your own file, we will point you to a licensed loan originator instead of answering.
Why it helps
Your story decides which guide we write next, and shapes the file work we build for brokers, starting with which documents get asked for and when.
Building Adeft
A letter from the founders on building Adeft in the open.
What we are learning about how self-employed files move, what a guideline change means in practice, and what we got wrong. Written by the founders, with no client details. For borrowers, brokers, CPAs, and anyone curious how a mortgage file actually gets done. Unsubscribe in one click.
No sales follow-up. See our privacy policy.
Plainly
What this page is not.
Adeft Inc. is not a mortgage lender, mortgage broker, or loan processor, and it does not originate, arrange, or offer loans or take loan applications. Nothing here is advice about your situation, and nothing here tells you whether you qualify for a loan. The guides explain rules in general. How a rule applies to you depends on details only a licensed loan originator or your tax professional can weigh.
Our business will be file work for mortgage brokers: our agents will do the work, and a licensed processor will approve every outbound action. We do not take loan applications. Nobody pays us for referrals. We take no fee, from anyone, for sending a borrower to a lender or a broker. If you subscribe to the letter or book an interview, we use your email for that and nothing else. We do not sell it, and we do not pass it to a lender or a broker.
When you are ready to talk about your own file, talk to a licensed loan originator. You can check any originator's license, in any state, on NMLS Consumer Access. If you are a mortgage broker or a CPA, start with how it will work, or join the waitlist.