That's over four times their demonstrable annual earnings (if your earnings are as inconsistent as this, a bank is not generally going to care very much about what you were earning two years ago). Totally unsurprising that they were turned down, surely?

Also unclear whether this is earnings from a job or something else (the "adjusted gross income" would make me suspect at least partially something else). In a time of uncertainty, banks are going to be cautious, and some lenders realistically don't want to touch self-employed etc at all.

Banks were lending seven times annual earnings as of 2021. I have not seen updated numbers, but four times earnings is likely on the lower end of the average loan to income ratio.

Wait, really? I didn't know it had gotten that bad again; those are subprime crisis sort of numbers.

Yes. However, it doesn't actually say much about affordability because interest rates drive such a large percentage of costs.

A $285,000 mortgage (ignoring taxes+fees) would be $1,126/month at 2.5% APR but $1,618/month at 5.5%. If you use "conventional" lending standards a borrower with a household income of around $39k could qualify at 2.5%, but at 5.5% the income requirement would jump up to around $55k. The ratio drops from around 7.3 to 5.1.

https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco...

Also answered: He paid himself out a salary that was a small fraction of those figures (but most of which was self-employment income):

https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1513683918058262528

There was also a tweet saying how much of the last year was investment income, but I can't find that and Twitter actively makes that hard to search for.

Yeah, so he should be going to a specialist broker/lender, not a random bank.

A small bank or S&L that services the loan after issuing is more likely to issue the mortgage. And it’s more likely to benefit the community compared to a big bank. Worked for me.