Mortgage Questions, Answered

Start with a payment you're comfortable with rather than a house price. Run your own numbers in the mortgage payment and affordability calculators, then talk to a loan officer about pre-approval — that conversation turns an estimate into a number a seller will take seriously. The Loan Process guide walks through every step in order.

Pre-qualification is a quick, informal read on what you might afford based on what you report — useful for planning, not for making an offer. Pre-approval means a loan officer has actually reviewed documentation (income, assets, credit) and can give you a real number a seller will take seriously.

For most borrowers: recent pay stubs, two years of W-2s or tax returns, bank statements, and photo ID. Self-employed borrowers may substitute bank statements for tax returns, and ITIN borrowers use ITIN tax filings in place of a Social Security number. A loan officer will tell you exactly what your specific situation needs before you gather anything.

Neither. The loan program quiz is a few questions about your situation that point toward the programs built for it. Nothing is submitted and no credit is pulled — it's a starting point for a conversation with a loan officer.

An underwriter verifies the file against the program's guidelines — income, assets, credit, and the property itself (via the appraisal) — and either clears it to close or issues conditions that need to be resolved first. Because Entrust underwrites in-house, a loan officer can usually tell you directly what's outstanding rather than you waiting on an update from a third party.

That's common enough that it has its own set of programs rather than being an exception. Bank statement loans qualify off 12–24 months of actual deposits instead of tax returns, which suits self-employed borrowers and 1099 contractors. Non-QM programs document income in other ways again. Neither treats a non-W-2 income as a problem to explain away.

Yes, through an ITIN loan, built for borrowers who file taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead. It's a real, established path — not a workaround — and one of the programs Entrust's bilingual team works with most often.

Not necessarily. DSCR loans qualify a purchase off the property's own rental income rather than personal income, employment, or tax returns — the property is underwritten essentially as its own business.

Hard money qualifies primarily off the property and the deal itself rather than personal income and debt-to-income ratio, which suits fix-and-flip projects and purchases a conventional timeline doesn't fit. The trade-off is a higher rate and a shorter, interest-only term with the principal due at the end, usually through sale or refinance. The Hard Money Loan Guide covers the details.

Twenty-one, spanning first-time buyer programs (FHA, conventional, VA, USDA), alternative income documentation (bank statement, ITIN, non-QM, foreign national, doctor), and investor and commercial financing (DSCR, hard money, fix-and-flip, new construction, land, commercial). The loan programs page lists each one with its own detail page.