If you own your business, the hardest part of borrowing money has never been having the income. It is proving it in the format a lender is allowed to accept. Underwriting guidelines were written around a pay stub and a W-2, and self-employment does not produce either one. What it produces instead is a tax return that, if your accountant is doing their job, understates your earning power on purpose.
That is the gap this program is built for. Below is exactly how it works.
What the lender actually looks at
Three things carry the file: your bank data, your property, and your credit. That is the whole list.
- Bank data. Twelve months of activity in the account your business revenue is deposited into. You connect the account through a secure link rather than uploading statements one at a time, and the read-only connection returns the history in roughly two minutes.
- The property. You must have owned it for at least 90 days. Most lines up to $400,000 are valued automatically, which means no appraiser walks through your house and nothing has to be scheduled around your work week. Above $400,000 a full appraisal is required, along with stricter qualifying.
- Credit. Pre-qualification runs on a soft pull that does not affect your score. A hard pull only happens if you choose to move forward.
What is not on the list matters just as much: no personal or business tax returns, no Schedule C, no K-1s, no W-2s, no profit-and-loss statement, no letter from your CPA, and no verification-of-employment call — because there is no employer to call.
How deposits become qualifying income
This is the part worth being precise about, because plenty of sites are vague in a way that is designed to mislead rather than to be accurate.
Your deposits are not counted dollar-for-dollar. Every business has costs, and the lender applies an expense factor to your deposit history to arrive at the income figure underwriting can actually use. The size of that factor depends on which program your file fits — it is not one universal percentage, and anyone quoting you a single number before looking at your situation is guessing.
The practical consequence is simple: you cannot calculate this yourself from a blog post, and you should not try. What you can do in a few minutes is connect the account, run the soft pull, and get a real figure with your own numbers in it. Neither step touches your credit score.
The loan itself
The documentation method is unusual. The loan is not.
- Fixed rate, locked per draw. Each draw is set at the rate in effect when you take it, on a term of 10, 15, 20 or 30 years. This is not a variable line that reprices every time the prime rate moves.
- Principal and interest from the first payment. Fully amortized on a set schedule. There is no interest-only period and no balloon, so there is no year-eleven payment shock waiting for you.
- Daily simple interest. Interest accrues on your outstanding principal only. Pay extra in a strong month and you pay less interest starting immediately.
- First, second or third lien. Your existing first mortgage stays exactly where it is, at the rate you already have. If you refinance it later, the line can be subordinated on request.
- $25,000 to $750,000. With no prepayment penalty — pay the balance down when cash flow allows and the credit frees back up to draw again during the draw period.
The timeline, day by day
- Day one. Apply online — address, rough value, what you owe, how you are paid. Connect the business account. Soft pull runs. You see a range the same day.
- Days one to three. The automated valuation comes back on most files up to $400,000, and underwriting reviews the deposit history.
- Days three to five. Terms are issued and you sign electronically. On a primary residence, federal law gives you a three-day right to cancel before funds release.
Five days is what a clean file looks like, not a promise. The things that stretch it are almost always the same: a property that needs a full appraisal, revenue deposited across several accounts, a recent change in the business, or a state with its own required waiting period.
Where it is available
Properties in 30 states. It is not available in New York at all, and Texas has its own home-equity rules and a longer required timeline, so a Texas file behaves differently from the day it starts. Second homes and investment properties follow different guidelines than a primary residence — worth asking before you assume either way.
When this is the wrong tool
Three situations where you should probably do something else.
Your tax returns already show the income. If you take modest deductions and your Schedule C supports the debt, a conventional HELOC from your own bank may cost you less. Use the documentation shortcut when you need it, not by default.
Your current first mortgage rate is above today's market. Then a cash-out refinance may beat a second lien, because you are improving the big loan instead of protecting it. The whole logic of a second position rests on your first mortgage being worth keeping.
You do not want the house behind it. A home equity line is secured by your home. If the money is funding something genuinely speculative, an unsecured business loan costs more and is the honest trade for keeping your house out of it.
Common questions
Is a bank-statement HELOC a real HELOC or something else?
It is a real home equity line of credit, secured by your home and recorded against the property. The only unusual part is the documentation: qualifying income comes from 12 months of bank deposits rather than from tax returns. The fixed rate, the amortization, the lien position and the draw period all work the way a standard line works.
Do I need a profit-and-loss statement or a letter from my CPA?
No. Neither is required. The income side of the file is built from the bank data you connect, which is why the verification step takes about two minutes rather than the weeks it takes to get documents back from an accountant.
Can I still do this if my business had a slow quarter?
Usually, yes. Twelve months of history is reviewed as a whole, so a seasonal dip reads as seasonality rather than as decline. That is one of the practical advantages over a tax return, which compresses a whole year into a single number.
Will this affect the low rate on my first mortgage?
No. The line sits behind your existing first mortgage in second or third position, and the first mortgage keeps its rate, term and payment. For most homeowners holding a rate from a few years ago, that is the entire reason to use a second lien instead of refinancing.