The Quick Read: Usually no: on the asset qualifier path, where eligible assets cover the entire loan amount, the lender documents your assets and credit rather than your income, so traditional personal-income documentation typically is not part of the file, subject to underwriting and the lender’s review of your specific loan. On the asset depletion path, returns are also not needed when your assets are your only income. Here is what changes the answer:
- Asset qualifier path: eligible assets must equal or exceed the whole loan, and no employment or income is documented.
- Asset depletion path: usable assets divided by 60 months become your qualifying income, which then runs through a debt-to-income test.
- Where returns can return: if you add wages, self-employment or other income to the depletion calculation, that income is documented under its own rules.
- Not a shortcut: assets, credit and the property are all documented. Skipping traditional personal-income documentation, pay stubs or employment verification never means “no documentation.”
- Pennsylvania: the program figures do not change by state. Lendmire’s consumer mortgage lending is licensed in Pennsylvania, and loans are subject to underwriting through select programs.
What Is an Asset-Based Mortgage?
An asset-based mortgage is reviewed around what you own instead of what you earn. The lender looks at statements for brokerage accounts, savings, CDs and retirement funds. Then it either counts those assets against the loan directly or turns them into a monthly income figure.
You will see several names for this: asset-based, asset depletion, asset utilization, asset qualifier. They overlap, and many pages use them as synonyms. They are not quite the same. Across the wholesale network where Lendmire places files, there are two distinct paths, and you are qualified on one path at a time.
The term also gets used for business lending against inventory or receivables. That is a different product. Here we are talking about a home loan for a person.
The reader this fits best is cash-heavy and income-light. Think retirees, someone who just sold a business, an heir, a person living on settlement proceeds, or an early-retired professional living off a portfolio. Large balances, small documented income. Conventional underwriting reads that picture badly. These programs read it better.
Path One: The Asset Qualifier
On the asset qualifier path, your eligible assets, after credit percentages, must equal or exceed the entire loan amount. The lender does not document your employment or income. Leverage runs up to 80% on a purchase and up to 75% on a refinance, for a principal residence or second home, through select programs.
Loans run up to $4,000,000 on this path. The credit floor is 600, subject to underwriting. Cash-out terms on this path are set by the lender and are not published, so do not plan around a number.
Only part of each balance counts:
- Brokerage accounts, CDs, money market and savings count at 100%.
- A 401(k) or IRA counts at 90% if you are under 59½ and 100% at 59½ or older.
- Accounts combine.
Here is an illustrative example. Say you want an $800,000 loan. You hold $330,000 in brokerage accounts (100%, so $330,000 counts), $300,000 in a 401(k) while under 59½ (90%, so $270,000 counts) and $200,000 in savings (100%, so $200,000 counts). Together that is $800,000 of usable assets, enough to qualify on assets alone. The lender’s own calculation governs, and every file is underwritten individually.
Where does traditional personal-income documentation fit? It doesn’t. The lender’s review rests on the assets. That is why the answer to the title question is a plain no on this path.
Path Two: Asset Depletion
On the depletion path, the lender converts assets into income. It applies a haircut to each asset type, adds up what is left, and divides by 60 months. The result is a monthly qualifying income. That income must carry the full housing payment and your other debts through the debt-to-income test.
The haircuts are different from the qualifier path:
- Cash accounts and CDs count at 100%.
- Securities count at 80%.
- Private stock counts at 75%.
- Retirement accounts count at 70% at any age.
- Real-estate equity counts at 60%.
Not eligible: custodial accounts, deferred compensation, escrow accounts, foreign funds, cash on hand, stock options, non-vested restricted stock units, and funds from non-regulated financial companies.
Run the numbers on a portfolio. You hold $1,500,000 in securities (80%, so $1,200,000 counts) and $300,000 in cash (100%, so $300,000 counts). That is $1,500,000 of usable assets. Divide by 60 months and you get $25,000 of monthly qualifying income. That income then has to carry the housing payment and other debts.
Loans run from $125,000 to $3,500,000 on this path. When depletion is your only income, qualified assets must be at least the lesser of $1,000,000 or 1.25 times the loan balance, and never below $250,000 in liquid assets. Credit follows the lender’s matrix. A first-time investor needs a 700 score.
Leverage on the depletion path depends on the property:
| Occupancy | Purchase / rate-and-term | Cash-out |
|---|---|---|
| Principal residence or second home | Up to 80% | Up to 60% |
| Investment property | Up to 65% | Up to 60% |
Cash-out proceeds never count as qualifying assets. These figures are ceilings, never offers, and all are subject to underwriting.
When Do Tax Returns Come Back?
Returns can reappear when you stop qualifying on assets alone. This is where one lender’s “never” and another’s “sometimes” come from.
You blend assets with other income. Asset-derived income may supplement documented income, up to a 45% debt-to-income ratio. When it supplements, the minimum-assets rule is waived. But the other income is now part of the qualification. A wage earner shows pay records. A self-employed borrower usually shows business income documents, and returns are often how that income is proven. If you want that route, Lendmire’s piece How Many Years of Tax Returns Does a Self-Employed Mortgage Need? shows what that income file looks like.
A lender overlay applies. The programs in Lendmire’s network set the baseline, but individual lenders layer their own overlays. Some may ask for more on a particular file. Most files that qualify purely on assets never see this, but it happens.
You switch loan types. Borrowers who want to document income with deposits are in a different program, the bank statement loan, and it does document personal income. That is not the same as qualifying on assets.
The loan purpose is personal and the property is a rental. This one catches people. If you cash out of a rental to pay personal expenses, lenders treat it as a consumer-purpose loan. Doss Law’s guide on the business-purpose exemption gives the example of a single-family rental refinanced to pay personal income taxes. Income documentation then becomes mandatory.
Practical rule: if your assets alone carry the loan, expect no returns. If any income joins the calculation, expect that income to be documented.
What You Hand Over Instead of Returns
You do not hand over nothing. Expect these:
- Government ID and a credit authorization.
- Statements for every account you want counted.
- The purchase contract, for a purchase.
- A paper trail for any large recent deposit.
- Entity documents, if the title will sit in an LLC, subject to lender program eligibility.
Seasoning is the waiting period a lender wants funds to sit before it counts them. On the qualifier path it is 60 days, with two months of statements for each qualifying account. On the depletion path, statements must be at least 120 days old at application, plus the most recent statement dated within 45 days. Sale-of-business, inheritance and legal-settlement funds are excused from that seasoning, though the lender still reviews where they came from.
That source review is the point. Lenders scrutinize fresh deposits because assets, not income, carry the loan. A balance that appeared last week raises questions a balance held for years does not.
Other asset classes, such as cryptocurrency, precious metals, collectibles or borrowed funds, are not published as eligible on either path. The documented route is converting them to a seasoned cash balance in a regulated account, with the source reviewed by the lender. They never count at a percentage.
Why Lenders Ask for Returns, and Why Some Don’t
Conventional documentation exists to prove steady income. That works well for a salaried borrower. It works badly for a retiree with a large portfolio and little taxable income, or an owner whose write-offs make earnings look small on paper.
An asset-based file asks a different question: can these assets carry this loan? The lender’s ability-to-repay review is built on the assets. This is not the old stated-income lending that gave low-doc loans a bad name. Every asset is documented and traced.
Because this is a consumer mortgage, TRID disclosures apply, as with other home loans for personal use. Rental financing is a different product, covered next.
Buying a Rental? Think DSCR Instead
If you are buying a pure rental, the asset-based programs are not usually the fit. DSCR loans are designed for non-owner-occupied investment properties. Because they are business-purpose investor loans, they are reviewed differently from a standard owner-occupied mortgage. The CFPB’s Regulation Z commentary on business-purpose credit lays out that exemption, and when the agency finalized its ability-to-repay rule, it declined to extend it to investment-purpose loans.
In practice, a DSCR loan is reviewed primarily on property-level rental income covering the payment, subject to lender guidelines. Traditional income documentation is generally not part of that file, though credit, reserves, the appraisal and entity documents still are. Business-purpose loans are also exempt from TRID. Sub-1.00 coverage is available through select lenders in the network, with leverage and terms adjusted.
The asset depletion path can still fund an investment property, at the 65% and 60% leverage shown above, but it asks for large assets. Rent coverage does not enter that math. Most rental buyers with strong rent and modest liquid assets are better served by DSCR. These specifics are subject to lender guidelines and a full review of property, leverage, and credit.
Side by Side
| Path | Income documented? | Personal-income paperwork typically needed? |
|---|---|---|
| Asset qualifier | No, assets cover the loan | Typically no |
| Asset depletion, assets only | Derived from assets | Typically no |
| Asset depletion plus income | Yes, the added income | Often, for that income |
| Bank statement | Yes, from deposits | Not the main route |
| DSCR (rental purchase) | Property rent vs. payment | Generally no |
A conventional full-documentation loan asks for personal-income paperwork such as traditional income documentation and pay records. Those are that program’s rules, not this one’s.
A Practical Experience Note
Files built on assets tend to stall on the paper trail, not the balances. A common pattern: a borrower sells a business, the proceeds sit in a new account, and the file needs the sale documents to show where the money came from. Another: retirement funds split between accounts of different ages and types, so the haircut math needs care. Gathering statements for every account before applying is an improvement most files can make.
Another pattern: a depletion borrower with a bit of pension or rental income wonders whether to add it. Often the asset income alone clears the test, and leaving the extra income out keeps the file simpler. Run it both ways before you decide.
Who Should Not Use This
Skip it if your documented income is already strong and your assets are modest. A conventional route may serve you better. Skip it if you need to count crypto or collectibles without converting them. Skip it if you cannot keep the assets in place through the review. And if you are buying a pure rental with only modest liquid assets, DSCR is probably the better tool.
Key Terms Defined
Asset qualifier: a path where eligible assets, after credit percentages, equal or exceed the whole loan, with no income documented.
Asset depletion: a path that divides usable assets by 60 months to create monthly qualifying income.
Haircut: the share of an asset’s balance a lender will not count, such as the 20% cut on securities.
Seasoning: the time funds must sit in an account before they count.
Debt-to-income (DTI): your monthly debts divided by your monthly income.
DSCR: debt service coverage ratio, meaning a rental’s income compared with its monthly payment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need conventional personal-income paperwork if my assets cover the entire loan?
Typically no. On the asset qualifier path, no employment or income is documented, and the lender’s review rests on your assets and credit. Statements, seasoning and the source of funds still get reviewed, subject to underwriting.
Is an asset-based mortgage a no-doc loan?
No. Income is not documented on the qualifier path, but your assets are, and so are your credit, the property and the source of any large deposits. “No income documentation” never becomes “no documentation.”
Can I combine assets with other income?
Yes, on the depletion path. Asset-derived income may supplement documented income up to a 45% debt-to-income ratio, and the minimum-assets rule is waived when it does. Any other income you add is documented under its own rules, which can include returns.
Do retirement accounts count?
Yes, at different percentages by path. On the qualifier path, a 401(k) or IRA counts at 90% under 59½ and 100% at 59½ or older. On the depletion path, retirement accounts count at 70% at any age.
Does this work for a rental property in Pennsylvania?
Only on the depletion path, at up to 65% on a purchase and 60% on a cash-out, subject to underwriting. Most pure rental buyers use DSCR instead, which qualifies primarily on property-level rental income. State rules do not change these program figures.
Next Step
If you are qualifying on assets rather than income and want to see how the numbers work, Lendmire can help you compare asset-based mortgage options based on your statements, the property, credit profile, leverage, and your goals. Reach the team at 828-256-2183 or request a quote. Nothing here is a commitment to lend.
Lendmire’s asset-based mortgage in Pennsylvania page presents the program for Pennsylvania borrowers.
About Lendmire
Lendmire is a mortgage brokerage (NMLS# 2371349) licensed for consumer mortgage lending in 16 states, arranging bank statement and other alternative-documentation mortgages — P&L-only, 1099-only and asset-based paths — through a wholesale lending network. Eligibility is determined by the lender on each file. Scotsman Guide named Lendmire a Top Mortgage Workplace in both 2025 and 2026.
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References
1. Doss Law, Business Purpose Exemption Simplified
2. CFPB, Regulation Z §1026.3: Exemptions
3. Federal Register, Ability-to-Repay and Qualified Mortgage Standards
This article is part of Lendmire’s asset-based mortgage program — full qualification details, guidelines, and scenarios live on the program page.
Related reading: How Pennsylvania Retirees Qualify for a Mortgage Without a Paycheck · How to Buy Before You Sell in Montana Using an Asset Qualifier Mortgage · Can You Lock Terms on an Asset-Based Mortgage Before Your Assets Finish Seasoning?
Guides: Asset-Based Mortgage in Pennsylvania
Brandon Miller
Founder & CEO, Mortgage Loan Originator, Lendmire LLC
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Disclosures. The information presented in this article is general market commentary, not financial, legal, or tax advice. Lendmire is a mortgage brokerage (NMLS# 2371349) — not a direct lender or depository institution — and loan placement is subject to lender underwriting. Nothing in this content represents a commitment to lend. Loan terms, pricing, and program availability vary based on borrower qualifications, property characteristics, and state of subject property, and are subject to change at any time. Lendmire complies with Equal Housing Opportunity requirements. Consumer access: nmlsconsumeraccess.org.