Non-QM & Alternative Doc

A non-QM loan is a mortgage that qualifies you with documentation other than tax returns — bank statements, 1099s, a CPA-prepared P&L, or liquid assets. In California, non-QM is how self-employed borrowers with strong real income but heavily-written-down taxable income buy homes that conventional underwriting would deny.

Who actually uses these programs

Roughly one in five Southern California borrowers I work with is self-employed — agency owners, contractors, restaurateurs, independent physicians, content creators. Their tax returns are optimized to minimize taxable income, which is exactly what conventional underwriting punishes. A 24-month bank-statement program reads your actual deposits instead: if your business deposits $28K a month, you qualify like someone earning $28K a month — not like your Schedule C says.

The honest trade-off

Non-QM rates run roughly 1 to 2 points above conventional, and most programs want 10–20% down with reserves. That premium is the cost of documentation flexibility — and for borrowers whose alternative is not buying at all, or waiting two tax cycles to show inflated taxable income, the math usually favors buying now and refinancing into conventional later once returns support it. I price every non-QM scenario against its conventional alternative so you see the real gap before committing.

The California angle

California has the largest self-employed population in the country and home prices that outrun most W-2 incomes anyway. The deepest non-QM lender benches are built for this state — 12- and 24-month bank statement, 1099-only, asset depletion for retirees with seven-figure portfolios and modest pension income, ITIN programs for established taxpayers without Social Security numbers, and foreign-national loans for overseas buyers of California property. Every program below links to its own eligibility detail.