Can A CPA Letter Cut A Practice Owner’s Bank Statement Expense Factor — The Quick Read: Yes, a signed CPA letter can replace the flat expense ratio a lender applies to business bank deposits with your business’s actual, documented ratio. But this only matters on a bank-statement loan, not a DSCR loan — DSCR loans qualify on the property’s rent, not your practice’s deposits. If your business runs lean, the letter usually helps. If it runs heavy on overhead, it can work against you.
That’s the whole answer in two sentences. The rest is mechanics, exceptions, and when this tool is worth your CPA’s time.
What Exactly Is An Expense Factor?
A bank-statement loan looks at what actually lands in your bank account instead of your traditional personal-income documentation. Because business deposits represent gross revenue, not take-home income, lenders apply an expense ratio to knock that number down to something closer to real profit.
Across the wholesale programs Lendmire places files with, expense ratios generally scale with business size and type. Solo, no-employee service businesses tend to sit at the lower end. Businesses with a small staff sit somewhat higher. Larger or product-based businesses land higher still. A profit-and-loss method also exists for files where the borrower’s accountant-prepared P&L tells a cleaner story than raw deposits do.
A dentist running a lean practice with two hygienists and no other staff might actually spend closer to 20-25% of gross revenue on overhead. Get stuck with a default 40% or 50% ratio, and a lot of real qualifying income disappears on paper for no reason connected to the actual business.
How A CPA Letter Changes The Math
The letter substitutes your practice’s certified actual expense ratio for the program’s default fixed number, and the underwriter runs the math off that instead.
Here’s the flow: the underwriter totals your eligible deposits over the lookback window — 12 or 24 consecutive months — strips out transfers, loan proceeds, and one-off items, then applies an expense ratio to net it down to qualifying income. Absent documentation, that ratio is the fixed default. A CPA (or enrolled agent, or a credentialed tax preparer who actually prepared your last filed return) can sign a letter certifying your practice’s real expense ratio based on review of your books and return. That certified number goes into the file instead of the default.
Transfers from your business account into your personal account still count in full regardless of which ratio applies — that part of the calculation doesn’t change.
One thing the letter is not: a solvency opinion, a forecast, or blanket reassurance about your business’s health. Professional standards keep CPAs from offering that kind of assurance in this context. The Tax Adviser notes that AT-C Section 105 specifically prohibits a CPA from providing any level of assurance — through examination, review, or agreed-upon procedures — that an entity is or will remain solvent. The letter has to stay narrow: a factual statement of a calculated expense ratio, tied to the filed return, nothing more. A self-signed letter from the borrower doesn’t count, and neither does a letter from someone with no actual knowledge of the return.
Does This Actually Apply To A DSCR Loan?
No — and this is the single most common mix-up in this conversation. DSCR loans qualify on the rental property’s income against its own payment, not on the practice owner’s personal or business bank deposits at all.
If a practice owner is buying or refinancing a rental property purely on a DSCR basis, an expense factor never enters the file. There’s no gross-deposit haircut to argue down because there’s no business-income calculation in the first place. Trade coverage of the non-QM market draws this same line: Scotsman Guide describes DSCR borrowers as investors who qualify based on property cash flow rather than personal income, distinct from the self-employed borrowers running bank-statement programs. For a deeper walkthrough of how that property-income math actually works, Lendmire’s complete DSCR loans guide covers the qualification mechanics start to finish.
So a practice owner shopping a straight rental purchase on DSCR terms should stop chasing the CPA letter for that file. It changes nothing there. Where it matters is the adjacent file — a primary residence purchase, a cash-out refinance against the practice’s real estate, or a hybrid deal where a lender is blending personal cash flow with a thin DSCR number. That’s the file where the expense ratio swing can be the difference between a deal clearing underwriting and one that doesn’t.
When The Letter Helps — And When It Backfires
The letter cuts whichever direction your real numbers point — it is not automatically a favor to the borrower. Low-overhead professional practices tend to benefit. High-overhead operations often don’t.
Think about two practice owners applying in the same month. A solo consultant with no staff and a home office might run an actual expense ratio well under the 20% default floor used for no-employee service businesses — a letter here moves qualifying income up meaningfully. Now picture a group medical practice with six or more employees, equipment leases, and a full office buildout. Its real overhead could easily run above the 50% default already baked in for larger staffed practices. A CPA letter there could certify a higher ratio than the program default, which reduces qualifying income instead of raising it.
The same risk shows up hard in contractor-style businesses, where money moves through an account and immediately flows back out to crews and suppliers. Those deposits sometimes need to be excluded from the averaging altogether, or hit with a materially higher effective ratio — no CPA letter changes that structural reality.
The practical takeaway: know your actual overhead before you ask for the letter. If your real expense ratio is close to the program default already, the letter probably isn’t worth the CPA’s time or your fee. If there’s a real, documented gap, it’s worth pursuing.
Who Can Sign It, And What It Has To Say
A CPA, enrolled agent, tax attorney, or a licensed/CTEC-certified preparer who actually prepared the business’s most recent filed return can sign it — nobody else, and never the borrower.
The document needs to state a specific expense-ratio percentage on the professional’s letterhead. This percentage must be tied to a review of the business’s financial records and its filed tax return. Lenders differ on how much history they want to see. They also differ on whether a matching profit-and-loss statement needs to go along with the letter. This means the same borrower file can get treated a little differently depending on which program it’s routed to. That’s part of why shopping the file across multiple wholesale programs tends to produce better outcomes for practice owners with unusual income shapes — rather than assuming one lender’s overlay applies everywhere.
State CPA societies reinforce the same scope limits from the professional’s side. Guidance from bodies like the Illinois CPA Society warns members against signing broader “comfort letters.” These letters stray into opinions about creditworthiness or future performance. That’s exactly why a properly scoped expense-ratio letter looks narrow and factual — not like a character reference.
What This Looks Like In Practice
Practice owners with lean overhead — like solo consultants or small professional-services shops — tend to be the strongest candidates for this letter. That’s because the gap between the fixed default ratio and the documented actual ratio is usually largest for them. Files from staffed, equipment-heavy, or product-adjacent practices need a harder look before requesting one. In these cases, the certified number can land above the default rather than below it. Across bank-statement files generally, borrowers usually raise the CPA letter question early with their loan officer. They also typically ask whether a 12-month or 24-month lookback fits their deposit pattern better.
Sizing And Leverage On These Files
Bank-statement and asset-based files through select lenders in Lendmire’s wholesale network run from $300,000 up through two connected programs — a portfolio non-QM bank-statement program to $6,000,000, and a bank portfolio program that carries twelve-month-statement files up to $30,000,000 on its own ladder: typically 65% loan-to-value to $5,000,000, 60% to $10,000,000, and 55% up to $30,000,000, with interest-only capped at 60% or the band’s ceiling, whichever is lower.
Leverage on a primary residence steps down as size rises — typically up to 90% around $1,000,000, 85% around $2,000,000, 80% around $3,000,000, and 75% at the top credit tier up to $4,000,000, subject to lender guidelines. Above $4,000,000, every file moves to case-by-case review before it’s even submitted — that holds true whether the file is leaning on a CPA-adjusted expense ratio, an asset-based path, or a straight P&L calculation. Second homes and investment properties typically run about five points lower in leverage at every size band, per select program guidelines.
On documentation generally, most programs in Lendmire’s network want 12 or 24 consecutive months of statements — transaction histories don’t substitute. Credit floors typically start around 660 on the portfolio program, moving up toward 700 above the super-jumbo threshold, with debt-to-income allowed up to roughly 50% on many files and reserve requirements scaling from about three months to nine months depending on loan size, subject to full underwriting.
Are you weighing a bank-statement loan against a straight rental-property purchase? First, learn how DSCR loans compare structurally to a bank-statement approach. The two loan types solve different qualification problems. They often serve different parts of the same portfolio.
Key Terms Defined
Expense factor (or expense ratio): the percentage of gross business deposits a lender assumes goes to overhead, subtracted before calculating qualifying income.
Bank-statement loan: a non-QM loan that qualifies a self-employed borrower using deposit history instead of traditional personal-income documentation.
DSCR loan: a business-purpose loan that is reviewed on a rental property’s rent-to-payment ratio rather than the borrower’s personal income.
CPA letter (expense-ratio letter): a signed statement from a credentialed tax professional certifying a business’s actual expense ratio, based on review of its filed return and financial records.
Profit-and-loss (P&L) method: an alternative income-calculation path using an accountant-prepared P&L instead of the fixed default ratio, typically capped around 80%.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a CPA letter help on every bank-statement file?
No. It only helps when your business’s actual documented expense ratio is genuinely lower than the program’s default. For lean, low-staff service practices that gap is often real. For staffed or product-heavy businesses, the certified ratio can come in higher than the default, which works against the borrower instead of for them.
Can my CPA just write whatever ratio I ask for?
No. Professional standards limit CPAs to factual, non-assurance statements tied to your actual filed return and books — they can’t certify a number that isn’t supported by your real records, and they’re barred from offering broader opinions about your business’s solvency or future performance.
What if my CPA won’t sign a lower ratio than the program default?
That usually means your documented overhead doesn’t support a lower number, and the fixed default is the more accurate reflection of your business. In that case, a different documentation path — like the P&L method or an asset-based qualification — may fit your file better than pushing for a letter.
Does this apply if I’m buying a rental property instead of a home for myself?
Generally no, if that rental purchase is being underwritten as a DSCR loan — qualification runs on the property’s rent covering its payment, subject to lender guidelines, not on your practice’s deposits. The expense-factor conversation only re-enters the picture on adjacent bank-statement files, like a primary residence or a cash-out refinance blending personal cash flow with a thin DSCR file.
How many months of bank statements does the lender actually look at?
Most programs in Lendmire’s network use either 12 or 24 consecutive months of statements, and the choice can affect which expense-ratio strategy makes sense — a shorter, cleaner 12-month window sometimes supports a stronger CPA-certified ratio than a longer window with more volatility in it.
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.
Tax treatment can depend on how the funds are used and how the property is held; investors should keep clear records and speak with a qualified tax professional before relying on any deduction.
Are you a practice owner weighing a bank-statement purchase against a straight DSCR-financed rental? Lendmire can help you compare the two paths. We’ll look at your income documentation, your credit profile, and your leverage goals. This comparison uses the actual numbers in your file — not a generic assumption about how your practice runs.
For current guidelines and terms, see Lendmire’s super jumbo bank statement loan programs page.
Self-employed borrowers can compare both super jumbo programs on Lendmire’s self-employed mortgages page.
About Lendmire
Lendmire — NMLS# 2371349 — is a DSCR and non-QM mortgage brokerage with investor loan programs in 40 markets, including Washington, D.C. DSCR eligibility is commonly reviewed by the lender around property-level rent rather than personal income documentation, subject to lender guidelines, and the brokerage helps arrange financing for LLC-owned portfolios beyond conventional financed-property limits. Recognized by Scotsman Guide as a Top Mortgage Workplace in 2025 and 2026.
Lendmire’s Top Mortgage Workplace recognition is documented by Scotsman Guide 2025 Top Mortgage Workplace and Scotsman Guide 2026 Top Mortgage Workplace.
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References
1. The Tax Adviser – Third-party verification requests
2. Scotsman Guide – Which groups are driving non-QM lending?
Brandon Miller
Founder & CEO, Mortgage Loan Originator, Lendmire LLC
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Required disclosures. Lendmire (NMLS# 2371349) operates as a licensed mortgage broker, not a direct lender or depository. The discussion in this article is general in nature and should not be relied upon as financial, legal, or tax advice — every investment scenario is unique and should be reviewed by a qualified professional. Any loan inquiry is subject to lender underwriting, and this article is not a commitment to lend or a guarantee of approval. Mortgage rates, loan terms, and program guidelines vary by borrower, property, and state, and may change without notice. Equal Housing Opportunity. Verify licensure at NMLS Consumer Access.
