How to Use Roommate & Rental Income to Qualify for a Mortgage

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

0:31This year, we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships, and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection, and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Delaroach on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she? She is not with us anymore. G. Okay, great, great, great way to start. Maybe you will cry. Ross Matthews.

1:05You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or a girl? Oh my God. All the time. That's so funny. I know. So I try to butch it up for kids so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up. It's basically like Doris Day. No, I turn into Bea Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.

1:38Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, hello, all my people. What's up? It's Questlove. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with the one and only ASAP Rocky. He reflects on his journey from Harlem roots to global icon status and discovering the hip-hop origin of his name.

2:20The ledge was on the TV. Rakim had the bucket hat Kangol join on. My pops was like, that's Rakim. That's who you named after. I just was like, damn the f*** I swear. Listen to the Questlove show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

2:41This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring. And sure, they definitely can be. But understanding a professional's routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little, day after day. It's like banking with PNC Bank. It might seem boring to save, plan, and make calculated decisions with your bank. But keeping your money boring is what helps you live a more happily fulfilled life. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. PNC Bank, National Association member, FDIC.

3:47It's incredible, right? Because people treat that like an event space for the day, right? So you can have somebody's backyard for eight to 10 hours and you're paying two,$300 an hour for the full use of their backyard and their swimming pool. So there's so many different ways to house hack and generate money with a single family or a duplex to make it more affordable. Now, also, here's another thing that people don't really realize is that border income, a.k.a. if you have a roommate, what people don't know is Fannie Mae will allow you to use this border income to help you qualify for a mortgage under the Fannie Mae Home Ready program.

4:33Now, the requirements is the borrower must have a history of receiving that rental income for at least nine of the past 12 months. And you need documentation such as your lease agreement and show proof of receipt that your roommate has been paying you to or since I live in an apartment together. And then you can use that income to help you qualify for a mortgage. So to break that down just in quick layman terms, if you are living with someone right now and you have a lease and they're on the lease with you, if they're your bona fide roommate, not just someone who just in the house and you say, hey, they live here.

5:12No, they have to be on your lease. If you know you are in position to qualify for a mortgage faster than they are, what you should do is collect the money, their portion of the rent money from them. Tell them to sell it to you, cash app it, whatever it is, and make sure you put that is on the memo. January is rent. February is rent. March rent. Right. So we can document it that they've been paying you. And then you go ahead and pay your landlord from your account. If you do that nine months out of the past 12, then when you go qualify for your mortgage, you can use that rental income as part of your income to help you qualify for your mortgage.

6:00Y 'all got where I'm going with this? I see where you're going with this. Documentation is important. Making sure you're keeping records is important. And that goes for if you're buying an individual home, but even more so in this situation when you're trying to have investment property. So you've unlocked something here. Let's go back a little bit. All right. If you're in a relationship with somebody, right? And we talk about 50-50 a lot, right? On these different shows and podcasts, but that's a real thing though, where somebody lives with somebody and they're contributing. They're contributing to something.

6:37But most of the time they're just giving a person money. So it's usually either male or female. Somebody has a lease in their name and they meet somebody and after a while, and then that person just kind of ends up living with that person. They may not never be on the lease. Correct. They're contributing financially on a certain level, but there's no real documented record of them contributing financially. Correct. You're saying that boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever you're living with somebody that should, that should be something that's documented because if it is documented and what is it called?

7:14So it's border income, right? So if in that same situation, you have the girlfriend, let's just say the boyfriend and the girlfriend moves in, right? Let's say that situation, the lease is in the boyfriend's name, but y 'all splitting it 50-50, as Rashad said. The girlfriend is not on the lease. Boyfriend is in position a year from now. He wants to go buy a house for them to live in. He should now put her on the lease of the apartment. And then now when she's making that contribution, don't make it cash. She should zale him a wire transfer, a cash app, put on the memo. It's for her portion of the rent.

8:00As long as we have that document, nine out of 12 months, and then now the boyfriend goes to get pre-approved and says that, hey, this is my roommate. She is going to live in the house with me. Now, from a lending perspective, I can use the portion of that rental income that she's paying. Let's just say it's$1 ,000 a month. I was going to say, clean number,$1 ,000 a month, right? On the memo, I'm putting$500 in toward that. At the end of the year, let's say it's the 12 months now, it's an additional$6 ,000 that you have in income. Correct. That's now is going to be you. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?

8:42Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-iHeart to get started. That's 844-844-iHeart. A new year doesn't mean erasing who you were. It means honoring what you've survived and choosing how you want to grow.

9:16It means giving ourselves permission to feel what we've been holding and knowing that it's okay to ask for help. I'm Mike Dallarocha, host of Sacred Lessons. This podcast is a space for men to talk openly about mental health, grief, relationships, and the patterns we inherit, but don't have to repeat. Here, we slow down. We listen. We learn how vulnerability becomes strength and how healing happens in community, not in isolation. If you're ready to let go of what no longer serves you and step into the year with clarity, compassion, and purpose, Sacred Lessons is your companion on your healing journey.

9:59Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike DeLaRoccia on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Sacred Lessons with Mike DeLaRoccia and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today. New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast. And every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

10:38Hey, what's up, y 'all? This is Questlove. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with A$AP Rocky ahead of his album release, Don't Be Dumb. He reflects on his journey from his Harlem roots to global icon status, discovering the hip-hop origin of his name. The ledge was on the TV. Rakim had the bucket hat Kangol during it. Pops was like, that's Rakim. That's who you named after. I just was like, damn, that was f***ing. I swear. Rocky offers a window into not only a boundary-breaking artist, but as a man committed to fusing creative ideas, community, and remaining unapologetically himself.

11:13Have you ever gotten roasted for any of your outfits? For sure. Some people don't be getting the vision. Look, they can roast me, they can cook me, they can deep fry me, they can saute, whatever they want. It's nobody who can f*** with my fashion sense and my taste is impeccable. I'm just like, I impress myself a lot. It's an amazing conversation, one you definitely don't want to miss. So listen to the Questlove show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

11:45This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she? She is not with us anymore. Great, great, great way to start. So this is a great beginning and hopefully you'll be able to, I don't know, maybe you will cry. Amanda Seyfried. Life is so short. If you feel something like that, you have that fire in you for this experience. It's not for a guy. It's for the experience of being in love. And like, it's bigger than a guy. Elizabeth Olsen. I love swimming naked so much. And I know you love taking pictures of yourself naked.

12:22Yes. I love to be naked. I just want to be in my bra and underwear all the time. Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or a girl? Oh my God. All the time. That's so funny. I know. So I'm always like, hi. I try to butch it up for kids, you know, so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up is basically like Doris Day. Right? No, I turn into Bea Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For the boyfriend, Doran has pre-approval to help them qualify for more of a house. It's a clean way of qualifying with using this roommate income because you're roommates, right?

13:08At the end of the day, you're not legally married. You're technically single in the eyes of the law. Boyfriend and girlfriend is not a marital status. Not a marital status either. Last time I checked. So you're legally single. This is your roommate. So if you do it that way, now that rental income can now be used to help qualify for a mortgage. Now, I know some people are going to say, why won't she just go on the mortgage with him? Now, we talk about divide and conquer. Let's just say now they move into this house, they get approved, and they wind up separating. Now, she doesn't have a mortgage in her name.

13:54She can still go out here and buy a duplex, a single family, and house hack her life away as well. So just depending on your circumstances and your situation, if you understand real estate finance and these programs that are out there and if you set your documentation up the right way, you can really go out here and scale at a very high level and reap all the benefits of wealth building with real estate if you know exactly what you're doing. That's a very vital play, man. I never heard that. I'm glad you broke that down. But before it doesn't have to be boyfriend girlfriend either because there's a lot of scenarios somebody lives with somebody It could just be your college roommates or it could be could it be parent child?

14:38No, it can't be parent and child Right, but let's think about college roommates think about what's just happened in may and june We have all these college graduates, right? Most of them have what roommates For the majority, so first of all if you just graduated college congratulations, right? But did you know that you can use your college education as your work history? You don't need a two year job history. You can use your college history as work history. Did you guys know that? Say that again. So you just graduated from college. You did your undergrad. Right. Four years. You're 22 years old.

15:16You're graduating. You just got a job offer from, you know, earn your leisure entertainment. and you're going to start and you're going to be the marketing manager. You're making a base salary at$100 ,000 and you have an offer letter from Earn Your Leisure Entertainment to start August 1st. You don't need to work at Earn Your Leisure Entertainment for two years. You have your college history for four years. That's your work history. You can now present that offer letter and your first pay stub and you can buy a house immediately. So you can use college as work experience? Absolutely. Absolutely.

15:54Has that always been the case? Absolutely. Hmm. Okay. Absolutely. Right. And now if you freak it, you got that college history, four years, you got your degree, but during college you have a single family home that you was renting out. and now your roommate is on a lease. If you do what we just said with the boyfriend and girlfriend scenario, now your roommate starts paying you and you know you have a better chance of getting the house faster than them, have them pay you. Now, first of all, everybody got to be on the same page with this, right? Everybody got to be a team effort here. So now they pay you instead of paying their portion of the rent, you pay the landlord and now you can use that border.

16:42Not only can you use the offer letter from On Your Leisure Entertainment, you can also use that roommate income to help you qualify because now that roommate is going to move into your house with you as well and continue to be a roommate. And that offer letter is kind of one of those things that you kind of need to have in order for this to work. You can't just go out. We need to show that you got a job. Right. Right. We need to show that you have a job and it's a start date and you can go ahead and get pre-approved. But one of the pre-approval conditions is going to be, hey, when you get into contract, we need to know that you're working now.

17:21We need to see pay stubs from Earn Your Leisure Entertainment, as we use in that example, to show those pay stubs. So that way now, and it matches up with the income from the offer letter, then boom you use that long as your credit is good your dti works you don't have to wait two years to qualify yeah that's a good hack because there's a there's plenty of college students who there's three roommates but there's the one person who gets the lease right if that person now looks at those two and that you're just saying it for one roommate yeah actually that could be two or three roommates that are paying them so that documentation port becomes even more important Exactly.

17:59But the key is everybody has to be on a lease. Everyone has to pay you. And then everyone has to be moving into your house because now it's border income, roommate income, and we're using that to help qualify. So it needs to sustain to the new house. The key. So if everybody's on the same page, this could be a home run. But here's how we even go a little bit deeper with this pause. If you buy a home that has an ADU, an accessory dwelling unit on it, right? Everybody type ADU in chat. If you have an ADU, you can use rental income from an ADU and it can help you qualify. So let's just say, for example, you don't have the roommates, you live by yourself, but you just graduated college and you want to use that college degree hack.

18:54Right. But you might be short with rent with income to qualify. You find a house that has an ADU and we can use that rental income from the ADU to help you qualify as well. and when you get into the adu now we're going to use long-term rental income to help you qualify but that does not mean you have to have a long-term tenant you can now turn that adu into an airbnb play vrbo you can make it a content studio there's so many different things you can you can target midterm renters like traveling nurses like flight attendants like depending on what city you live. So if you live close to airports, you live close to hospitals, right?

19:44You should be targeting homes that are closer in proximity to these areas because the midterm rental income from corporations, right? You have people who travel from corporations. They may need someone to stay for six weeks because they're doing a corporate project in a certain city. Think about what's happening. And guys, I'm going to tell you another hack. And I've talked about this on my program and I know you guys talked about it. Look at all the AI data centers that's being invested and built all around the country, right? You got Texas. I think there was two or three half a billion dollar projects that was launched this year.

20:20Think about it. These people are not, the people who are constructing this, they're not going to be long-term residents of Texas, right? They're probably coming in from all different parts of Walker life. So what do they need? Rentals. They might only be out there to do a job that's going to take six months. So what do they need? A midterm rental. They don't want to sign a year lease or a two-year lease. They may need only a six-month lease, eight-month lease, and it's going to be cheaper than the corporations putting them into a hotel because that daily rent at a hotel, that shit going to add up.

20:52You know what I'm saying? So you got to really take the current events and everything that's happening. I know you guys talk about it at scale on Market Monday, This is why you need to tap in every Monday, 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time to see what is moving and shaking. Because all of these moves that's happening in AI, those are also real estate plays, too, if you're paying attention. Ernest, what's up? You ever walk into a small business and everything just works? Like the checkout is fast, the receipts are digital, tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before the line even builds. Odds are they're using Square.

21:28We love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just feels seamless, whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor at a pop-up market, or even one of our merch partners. Square makes it easy for them to take payments, manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from one simple system. One of the things we love most is seeing neighborhood businesses level up. There's this West Indian spot right in our community that started with a small takeout counter. Now with Square, they've been able to expand into a full sit-down restaurant and even started catering events across the city.

22:02That's the kind of growth that inspires us, and it's powered by Square. Square is built for all types of businesses, from the corner bagel shop that turned into a local chain, to the specialty market with thousands of unique items, to the stylist who's been holding you down for years. If you're a business owner or even just thinking about launching something soon, Square is hands down one of the best tools out there to help you start, run and grow. It's not just about payments. It's about giving you time back so you can focus on what matters most. Ready to see how Square can transform your business?

22:37Visit square.com backslash go backslash E-Y-L to learn more. That's square.com backslash go backslash E-Y-L. Don't wait. Don't hesitate. Let Square handle the back end so you can keep pushing your vision forward. A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. It invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike De La Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal. This year, we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships, and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection, and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you.

23:16Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike De La Rocha on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she? She is not with us anymore. Okay, great, great, great way to start. Maybe you will cry. Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or a girl? Oh my God. All the time. That's so funny. I know. So I try to butch it up for kids so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up. It's basically like Doris Day.

23:49No, I turn into Bea Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

24:20My subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, hello, all my people. What's up? It's Questlove. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with the one and only ASAP Rocky. He reflects on his journey from Harlem roots to global icon status, and discovering the hip-hop origin of his name. The ledge was on the TV. Rakim had the Buckethead Kangol joint on. Pops was like, that's Rakim. That's who you named after.

25:01I just was like, damn the f***ing f***ing swag. Listen to The Questlove Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, men promised to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety, and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name. Part of the way through the valley of despair is realizing this has happened, and you have to make a choice whether you're going to stay in it or move forward.

25:37Our two-part conversation is available now. Listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.