A design demonstration. Ropewalk is not a real lender.

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RopewalkMortgage Co.
CalculatorsStart a file

The lender for irregular income

Income arrives in strands.
We lend on the whole rope.

Self-employed. On commission. Seasonal. Retired and drawing on assets. Paid by nine clients on nine schedules. If your income is real but does not fit a W-2 box, the question is not which loan you want — it is what you can put in front of an underwriter.

Start a fileOpen a calculator

Five routes

There are only five ways to prove you can pay

Every mortgage file in the country is built from these. Most borrowers use one. People with awkward income usually need two, and the whole job is picking which two.

01

Paystubs and W-2s

The straight strand. Salaried and hourly income, evidenced by paystubs, W-2s and a verbal verification of employment.

What it takes
02

Bank statements

Twelve or twenty-four months of deposits, with an expense factor applied. Built for owners whose tax return is written to minimise tax, not to qualify for a loan.

What it takes
03

Profit and loss

A CPA-prepared profit-and-loss statement, sometimes with 1099s alongside it. The shortest route when your accountant already has the numbers.

What it takes
04

Assets

No income used at all. A verified pool of liquid assets is divided across the term to produce a qualifying figure. Common for retirees and for people between ventures.

What it takes
05

Rental income

The property qualifies, not you. Market rent is compared with the full housing payment to produce a debt-service coverage ratio.

What it takes
Compare all fiveDocuments, method and what each one costs you in rate.

Cut the rope and look

A payment is not one number

It is four or five separate things bundled together, and only one of them is the loan. Turn the cord end to see the proportions. The figures below are a real calculation —$425,000 at 6.5% over thirty years with 10% down — run by the same functions the calculators use, so the picture and the arithmetic can never disagree.

  • Principal and interest is the only part that pays down the loan.
  • Tax and insurance are collected by the servicer and passed straight on.
  • Mortgage insurance follows the programme’s rule, not one rule — and on FHA it does not stop at 80%.
Work out your own

$3,184per month, illustrative

Drag or use the arrow keys on the knob to turn it. Hover a line below to raise its strand.

Eight calculators

Each one answers one question

Separate pages, live recalculation, month and year views, graphs that work in both themes, and a link you can copy that carries your inputs with it.

The lay book

Six files, and what each one turned on

A general contractor, four years on her own

Her returns show a net profit of about $41,000 after depreciation on two trucks and a full home-office deduction. Her business account takes in roughly three times that.

How the file was laid

  • Twenty-four months of business statements, with three inter-account transfers stripped out.
  • A 50% expense factor applied, because the account is the business account.
  • A CPA letter confirming she owns 100% of the company.
Deposits over 24 months
$612,000
Excluded transfers
$36,000
Expense factor
50%
Qualifying income
$12,000 / month

What it turns on. Whether the expense factor the programme uses is close to what her business actually costs to run. A CPA-supported factor of 35% would change this figure by thousands a month.

A commission salesperson with a very good year and a thin one

Base salary is modest; commission is most of the income and it swung from $34,000 one year to $96,000 the next.

How the file was laid

  • Base pay taken at face value from the paystub.
  • Commission averaged across 24 months, not taken from the good year.
  • A written statement from the employer that the structure has not changed.
Base salary
$54,000
Commission, year one
$34,000
Commission, year two
$96,000
Income used
$119,000

What it turns on. The direction of travel. Averaging is the rule when commission is rising; when it is falling, most underwriters use the lower recent figure instead of the average.

A retired teacher with a pension and a large brokerage account

The pension covers her life comfortably but not the ratio on the house she wants. Most of her money is not income.

How the file was laid

  • Pension counted directly from the award letter.
  • Brokerage balance discounted, then divided across the qualifying period to produce a second strand.
  • Confirmation that the discounted assets are not also the down payment.
Pension
$3,400 / month
Eligible liquid assets
$690,000
After discount and divisor
$2,100 / month
Combined income used
$5,500 / month

What it turns on. The divisor. Dividing the same pot across 84 months rather than 360 produces a completely different answer, and the programme — not the borrower — chooses it.

An investor buying a third duplex through an LLC

His personal return is a thicket of Schedule Es. The property itself is straightforward.

How the file was laid

  • Market rent taken from the appraiser’s rent schedule rather than the current lease.
  • The full housing payment worked out including association dues.
  • Reserves evidenced for six months of that payment.
Market rent
$3,250 / month
PITIA
$2,690 / month
Coverage ratio
1.21
Ratio with a 5% vacancy allowance
1.15

What it turns on. Whether the programme deducts vacancy before the ratio is worked out. Two lenders quoting "1.15 minimum" can mean two different things.

A freelance illustrator paid by nine clients on 1099s

Income is genuinely stable in aggregate and genuinely lumpy month to month. Two lenders declined on "insufficient income history".

How the file was laid

  • A CPA-prepared twelve-month profit-and-loss statement.
  • Two months of business statements alongside it, to support the statement rather than replace it.
  • 1099s from the four largest clients.
Gross revenue, 12 months
$188,000
Net income on the P&L
$121,000
Ownership share
100%
Income used
$10,083 / month

What it turns on. Whether the P&L and the bank statements tell the same story. When they disagree, the lower of the two is what gets used.

A charter captain who earns almost everything between May and September

Four months of heavy revenue and eight months of very little. A twelve-month average looks nothing like any individual month.

How the file was laid

  • Twenty-four months of statements rather than twelve, so two seasons are visible.
  • Off-season employment documented separately as a second strand.
  • Reserves shown, because a seasonal file is judged on whether the quiet months are survivable.
Season deposits, 2 years
$402,000
Off-season W-2 income
$21,000 / year
Expense factor
50%
Income used
$10,125 / month

What it turns on. Reserves. A seasonal borrower with twelve months of payments in the bank is a different proposition from the same borrower with two.

Deliberate omissions

Six things you will not find here

Most lender sites carry these. They are the parts a demonstration site cannot honestly have, so this one does not have them — and says why rather than quietly leaving a gap.

  • A rate table. Ropewalk publishes no rates. There is no rate table on this site, no “as of” date, and no APR presented as an offer — every figure a calculator here returns is arithmetic on a number you typed in yourself.
  • A star rating. A fictional company has no reputation to average, so there is no aggregate score and no review-count schema.
  • An NMLS number. An invented identifier in the format a regulator issues can collide with a working broker’s. It is omitted, and the omission is stated.
  • A closing time. No "close in 21 days", no "same-day pre-approval", no approval rate. None of it could be true here.
  • Map coordinates. The office address is invented outright and no latitude or longitude is published anywhere in the structured data.
  • A conformance claim. The site has not been independently audited, so it makes no WCAG claim — only specific, checkable statements about what it does.

Notes

Working through the awkward parts

Every note

Investing

Understanding DSCR Loans: The Investor's Path to Rental Property Financing

DSCR loans let real estate investors qualify based on rental income, not personal W-2s. Learn how they work, who qualifies, and how to use them to scale your portfolio.

Jun Castellanos · 9 min read

Refinance

Should You Refinance in 2026? An Honest Break-Even Analysis

Refinancing only makes sense if the math works. Learn how to calculate your break-even point, when to lock, and which refinance type fits your goals in 2026.

Ada Verrill · 7 min read

Buying

How Much Home Can I Afford? A 2026 Buyer's Worksheet

Use our step-by-step affordability framework — income, debt ratios, down payment, and hidden costs — to calculate a realistic home-buying budget before you shop.

Reva Lindqvist · 8 min read

Questions

The ones that actually get asked

Longer answers, and the ones that only apply to a particular route, are onthe questions page.

What does "income arrives in strands" actually mean?

It means most people are paid in more than one way, and a lender has to document each way separately. A salary is one strand; deposits into a business account are another; a CPA-prepared statement is another; a discounted asset pool is another; rent from a property is another. A file is one or more of those laid up together. Organising a lender by loan product hides that; organising it by income route makes it obvious.

Do you publish rates?

No. There is no rate table on this site and no APR presented as an offer. Every figure a calculator here returns is arithmetic on a number you typed in yourself, and every assumption behind it is listed on the page and editable.

Does FHA mortgage insurance stop at 80% loan-to-value?

No, and this is the single most common error in mortgage calculators. Conventional PMI ends automatically when the scheduled balance reaches 78% of the original value, under the Homeowners Protection Act. FHA annual MIP follows a different rule: on a loan longer than fifteen years it runs for eleven years if the loan-to-value at closing was 90% or less, and otherwise for the whole term. USDA charges its annual fee for the life of the loan. VA charges no monthly insurance at all. The calculators here apply each programme’s own rule.

Is a bank-statement loan more expensive?

Usually, yes. Documenting income from deposits rather than from tax returns puts a loan outside the qualified-mortgage box, and that carries a price. The honest comparison is not against a conventional rate you cannot get; it is against not buying, or against buying later. Whether it is worth it depends on the gap between the two rates and how long you expect to hold the loan before refinancing.

Is Ropewalk Mortgage a real company?

No. Ropewalk Mortgage Co. is fictional, built to demonstrate a website. It holds no licence, has no NMLS identifier, and cannot originate a loan. The people, the reviews, the office address and every figure on the site are invented. No form on this site sends anything anywhere.