The documents you will be asked for, and why each one

When a lender asks you for paperwork, they are not doubting you. They are answering four questions, and everything they ask for falls under one of them: who you are, what comes in, what you have saved, and what you owe. Once you know which question a document answers, the list stops looking arbitrary and turns into a task with an end.

Here is that list, including what changes depending on how you are paid and whether you are buying with a Social Security Number or an ITIN. It is worth assembling before the first call, because a file that stalls almost never stalls on the loan. It stalls on a piece of paper.

1. Who you are

• Government photo identification, unexpired. Passport, consular ID, driver’s license, or a state ID card.
• Your Social Security Number or your ITIN. If it is an ITIN, have the IRS assignment letter handy and confirm it has not expired.
• Where you have lived for the past two years. Both addresses if you moved, with dates.

2. What comes in

This is where it varies most, and the difference is about how you are paid rather than how much you earn.

If you are paid by an employer

• Your two most recent pay stubs, or the last month’s worth.
• Your W-2 forms for the last two years.
• Your federal tax returns for the last two years, complete, with every schedule.

If you are self-employed or own a business

• Two years of tax returns, personal and business, complete.
• A year-to-date profit and loss statement, meaning what has come in and gone out of the business since January.
• Business bank statements, usually three to twelve months.
• Your business license or state registration, if you have one.

If you are paid in cash

This is the uncomfortable part and it deserves to be said straight, because hearing it today is worth more than hearing it in month three.

Cash income that was never deposited and never reported almost never counts toward qualifying. That is not a judgment about your work. It is that an underwriter can only count income they can verify in a document, and cash that moved hand to hand left none.

What does work, if you are looking at a purchase a year or two out:

• Deposit the cash, consistently, in amounts that match what you earn. Steady, regular deposits build something verifiable. Scattered, uneven ones do not.
• Report that income. Income that does not appear on a tax return does not exist to a lender, however real it is in your life. A tax preparer is the right person for that conversation, not a lender.
• Start now rather than in the spring. Two years of returns is the usual ask, so the clock is long and cannot be shortened.

3. What you have saved

• Two months of statements for every account, every page. Yes, including the page that says it was intentionally left blank.
• Retirement or investment statements, if you plan to use that money.
• A gift letter, if a family member is helping. It names who is giving the money, how much, that it does not have to be repaid, and it travels with proof of the transfer.

Two rules about money, and they save weeks:

Every large deposit needs an explanation. An underwriter asks where each out-of-pattern amount came from. The right answer is a document, not a recollection. A cash deposit with no documented origin is the single most common delay in this process.

Leave the money still, starting two months out. Moving money between your own accounts is not suspicious, but every move creates a question and every question creates a piece of paper. Pick the account the down payment will come from and leave it there.

4. What you owe

Most of this comes off the credit report on its own, and it is still worth having in front of you:

• Car payments, cards, personal loans, and student loans, with the monthly payment on each.
• Child support or alimony, if either applies, with the court order.
• If you rent, the last twelve months of payment records.

If you are buying with an ITIN

Everything above still applies. Add these:

• The IRS assignment letter for your ITIN, and confirmation that it is current. The IRS expires ITINs that go unused on a federal return for three consecutive years.
• Tax returns filed under that ITIN, usually the last two years.
• The down payment, documented and left alone. It is 15 to 20 percent, which on a $250,000 house is $37,500 to $50,000. Family gift funds are allowed. What proportion may be gifted is something Israel confirms for your file rather than assuming.

If your household includes people with Social Security Numbers and people with ITINs, that alone is not an obstacle. What decides things is who goes on the application, and that is a twenty-minute conversation worth having before you pick a house rather than after. The product details are in buying a home with an ITIN.

The three mistakes that stall a file most

1. Sending half a bank statement. Every page is asked for, including the one that says it was left blank. An incomplete statement comes back and two days are gone.
2. Opening new credit mid-purchase. A car, financed furniture, or a store card between pre-approval and closing can undo an approval that was already given. Wait for the keys.
3. Changing jobs without telling your lender. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes everything does, particularly moving from salary to commission or to self-employment. Say so beforehand, not afterward.

How to start

Make one folder, physical or on your phone, with four dividers: identity, income, money, debts. Put in what you already have. What is missing is then visible, which is the whole point.

When that folder is roughly assembled, that is the signal the call will actually be useful. Israel Muñoz answers his own cell, in English or Spanish, and a call does not start an application or touch your credit.