Getting a mortgage with RSU income: how lenders count your vests

Most RSU holders shopping for a house assume their equity comp is invisible to a mortgage lender — that only base salary counts, and the shares are just a savings account they raid for the down payment. That is half right. The down payment is one use. But the income itself can do double duty: the same vests that fund the down payment can also raise how much house the lender will let you finance, sometimes dramatically. The catch is that lenders count RSU income on their terms, not yours, and those terms reward borrowers who prepared two years ago and punish the ones who walk in cold. Vested RSU income can nearly double your qualifying income — but only if you document it the way the underwriter needs to see it.

The 30-second answer: Conforming lenders following Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guidance can count vested RSU income toward your qualifying income when you show a consistent history — generally two years of vesting — and the income is likely to continue, typically at least three more years of scheduled vesting. They average the vest value over the look-back period and add that monthly figure to your salary, which raises your debt-to-income headroom and the loan you can carry. Unvested grants are discounted or excluded, and a volatile stock can shrink the credit. Separately, down-payment funds need about 60 days of seasoning, so sell RSUs and transfer the cash early, with documentation. Give your loan officer two years of vest statements and pay stubs up front.

This guide is a spoke off the goals guide, which covers the full sweep of funding a house, college, and a sabbatical from equity comp. That piece touches mortgage qualification briefly. This one goes all the way in: how the income gets counted, the exact two-year and continuance rules, the DTI arithmetic that turns counted income into loan capacity, the seasoning trap that sinks down payments at the last minute, and a prep checklist you can start running now. The audience is US residents with RSUs buying a US home.

Why lenders treat RSU income differently from salary

Salary is the easy case. It is fixed, it shows on a pay stub every two weeks, and a lender annualizes it without a second thought. RSU income is harder for an underwriter because it has two features that make lenders nervous: it is variable (the dollar value swings with the share price) and it is conditional (you only receive it if you stay employed through each vest date, and only if grants keep getting issued).

Lenders bucket income into stable and variable. Variable income — bonus, commission, overtime, and RSU vests — gets counted only when the borrower can show it is both established and likely to continue. That is the entire framework. Established means a track record, which the guidelines generally set at two years. Likely to continue means there is scheduled income ahead, which for RSUs means unvested grants on a known vesting schedule.

The good news is that RSU income is not exotic to a competent lender. Conforming guidelines from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac explicitly address restricted stock and RSU income, and lenders who work with employees at large public tech and finance firms see it constantly. The bad news is that the treatment is conservative by design, and a borrower who does not understand the rules can leave a large chunk of qualifying income on the table — or, worse, blow up a down payment over a seasoning technicality.

One framing worth holding onto: the lender is not trying to value your wealth. It is trying to forecast the cash flow that will service the loan for the next several years. That is why a million dollars of unvested grants vesting four years out helps you far less than a steady two-year history of vests landing in your brokerage account every quarter. The underwriter wants recurring, documented, forward-looking cash flow, not a balance sheet.

Bottom line: RSU income counts as variable income, which means lenders require both a track record and evidence it will continue — and they value reliable recurring vests over a large but uncertain future grant.

The two-year history rule and the continuance test

There are two gates RSU income has to clear, and they are separate.

The first gate is history. Conforming guidelines generally want two years of documented vesting before counting RSU income toward qualifying. Two years establishes that vests are recurring rather than a one-off — that you received shares in year one and again in year two, not just a single grant that happened to land. A borrower with one year of vests, or a brand-new hire whose first vest has not happened, generally cannot get the income counted, though base salary still qualifies them for whatever it supports.

The second gate is continuance. Even with a clean two-year history, the lender wants evidence that the income will keep coming. For RSUs, that means existing unvested grants on a known schedule — typically the lender wants to see at least three more years of scheduled vesting ahead. If you are at the tail end of a grant with almost nothing left to vest and no new grants issued, the income looks like it is about to stop, and a lender may decline to count it even though your two-year history is spotless.

Put together, the ideal profile is a borrower in the middle of a multi-year grant cycle: two full years of vests behind you, and several years of scheduled vests ahead. That is the sweet spot the guidelines were written for. New grants that refresh annually — common at large tech firms — fit this pattern naturally, because there is always a multi-year tail of unvested shares scheduled forward.

A few wrinkles that trip people up:

• Job changes reset the clock. If you switched employers eight months ago, your two-year history at the new company does not exist yet, even if you had years of RSU income at the prior job. Some lenders will consider continuity of the same type of income across employers, but do not count on it; treat a recent job change as a reason to lean on base salary.
• The grant has to be in your name and documented. Verbal promises of future grants, or grants not yet awarded, do not count. The underwriter works from vest statements and grant agreements, not from what your manager said about next year's refresh.
• Different lenders read "likely to continue" differently. This is one of the places where shopping matters. Ask the question directly.

Bottom line: RSU income has to clear two separate gates — a two-year history behind you and roughly three more years of scheduled vesting ahead — and a recent job change or a nearly-exhausted grant can fail the continuance test even when the history is clean.

How lenders value the income: averaging and haircuts

Once your RSU income clears both gates, the lender has to put a monthly dollar figure on it. They do not take your most recent vest at today's share price and annualize it — that would let a single lucky quarter inflate your income, or a single unlucky one crater it. Instead, the standard convention is to average the documented vest value over the two-year look-back period.

Worked example. Turning two years of vests into monthly income

Suppose your vests over the past two years totaled $96,000 in year one and $120,000 in year two. The lender averages them:

Item	Value
Year-one vested RSU income	$96,000
Year-two vested RSU income	$120,000
Two-year total	$216,000
Annual average	$108,000
Monthly qualifying income added	$9,000

The averaged figure is $108,000 per year, or $9,000 per month of additional qualifying income. That $9,000 gets added on top of your base-salary monthly figure when the lender computes your debt-to-income ratio. Notice that the average sits below the most recent year — averaging is inherently conservative when your income is rising, which is the common case for someone climbing a tech compensation ladder. The lender is deliberately not giving you full credit for the upward trend.

On top of averaging, some lenders apply a further haircut or volatility adjustment. If your stock is especially volatile or has fallen recently, a lender may use a lower figure — for instance, valuing the shares at a recent lower price rather than the price at each vest, or discounting the average by some percentage. A falling stock is the worst case: a clean history, but a shrinking income credit because the lender is nervous the cash flow is deteriorating. There is no universal formula here; it is a place where the lender's own overlays govern, which is yet another reason to ask the specific question early.

This is also the single best argument for the strategy in the diversification playbook: the same volatility that makes a concentrated RSU position risky to hold is the volatility that makes a lender discount your income. Selling vests as they land and holding the down payment in cash both de-risks your purchase and removes the asset whose price swings worry the underwriter.

Bottom line: lenders average your vest value over the two-year look-back rather than using the latest quarter, which understates rising income, and a volatile or falling stock can earn a further haircut on top.

DTI math: turning counted income into loan capacity

Counted income matters because of debt-to-income (DTI), the ratio that ultimately sets how much you can borrow. The back-end DTI is your total monthly debt obligations — proposed housing payment plus car loans, student loans, credit-card minimums, and so on — divided by your gross monthly qualifying income. Conforming loans, especially those run through automated underwriting, often allow a back-end DTI in the range of 43 to 50 percent depending on the program and your overall profile.

The mechanism is simple: more qualifying income means a higher dollar ceiling for total debt at the same DTI percentage, which leaves more room for the housing payment after your other debts are subtracted.

Worked example. The loan-size impact of counted RSU income

Take a borrower with a base salary of $180,000, or $15,000 per month, and the $9,000 per month of averaged RSU income from the example above, for $24,000 per month of total qualifying income. Assume a 43 percent back-end DTI ceiling and $1,000 per month of existing debt (a car payment and a student loan). Compare salary-only qualification against salary-plus-RSU:

	Salary only	Salary + averaged RSU
Qualifying income per month	$15,000	$24,000
Back-end DTI ceiling at 43%	$6,450	$10,320
Less existing debts	$1,000	$1,000
Room for housing payment (PITI)	$5,450	$9,320

The RSU history lifts the allowable housing payment from $5,450 to $9,320 per month — an extra $3,870 of monthly capacity. Housing payment here means PITI: principal, interest, taxes, and insurance, so not all of it is loan principal and interest. But the direction is unambiguous, and the magnitude is large.

To translate that into loan size, hold taxes and insurance aside and look at the principal-and-interest portion. At a 6.5 percent 30-year fixed rate, every $1,000 of monthly principal and interest supports roughly $158,000 of loan. If, say, $1,200 of each PITI figure goes to taxes and insurance, the salary-only borrower has about $4,250 for P&I (roughly $670,000 of loan) while the salary-plus-RSU borrower has about $8,120 for P&I (roughly $1.28 million of loan). The counted RSU income nearly doubles the financeable loan. Your exact tax-and-insurance figure will move these numbers, so treat the loan amounts as illustrative — but the near-doubling of capacity is the real effect.

Two honest caveats. First, qualifying for a larger loan is not the same as it being wise to take one; the pay-down-versus-invest analysis is worth reading before you stretch. Second, the bigger loan rests on the RSU income continuing, which depends on both your employment and your stock — the two things most likely to wobble together in a downturn.

Bottom line: counted RSU income raises your DTI ceiling in dollars, which can nearly double the housing payment and the loan a lender will allow — but a larger loan you qualify for is not automatically a larger loan you should take.

Fund seasoning: the trap that sinks down payments

The income side gets the attention, but the down-payment side is where deals actually fall apart at the last minute, and RSUs are a frequent culprit.

Lenders require your down-payment funds to be seasoned — to have sat in your account long enough to be clearly your own money. The common standard is about 60 days, documented with two months of account statements. Any large deposit that appears within that window gets flagged in underwriting as needing to be sourced: you have to prove where it came from and that it is not an undisclosed loan that would change your real DTI.

RSU proceeds are a textbook large deposit. If you sell shares and the cash hits your account three weeks before closing, the underwriter will see an unexplained five- or six-figure deposit and stop the file until you document it. You can document it — vest statements, trade confirmations, transfer records all establish the source — but it is friction at the worst possible time, and a disorganized borrower can delay or derail the closing.

The clean approach is to sell and move the money early. Sell the vests that will fund the down payment, transfer the proceeds into a savings or money-market account, and let them sit for at least two to three months before you make an offer. Seasoned, sourced, and boring is exactly what the underwriter wants to see.

Worked example. A seasoned down-payment timeline

You are buying a $700,000 home and want 20 percent down — $140,000 — plus a buffer for closing costs. Your grant vests quarterly. Rather than sell at the last minute, you sell each vest as it lands (close to tax-neutral) and route the net proceeds into a money-market fund, well ahead of your offer. Assume roughly 30 percent is withheld for taxes at each vest, so net cash is about 70 percent of the gross vest value:

Vest date	Gross vest	Tax withheld (~30%)	Net to money-market	Cumulative seasoned cash
Month 0	$30,000	$9,000	$21,000	$21,000
Month 3	$30,000	$9,000	$21,000	$42,000
Month 6	$35,000	$10,500	$24,500	$66,500
Month 9	$35,000	$10,500	$24,500	$91,000
Month 12	$35,000	$10,500	$24,500	$115,500
Month 15	$40,000	$12,000	$28,000	$143,500

By the end of month 15 you hold $143,500 of seasoned cash — the $140,000 down payment plus a roughly $3,500 buffer — all of it sitting in the same money-market account for months. If you make your offer in month 17 or 18, every dollar of the down payment has been parked far longer than the 60-day window, so there are no unsourced deposits to explain. Two practical notes. First, size the schedule off net proceeds, not the headline grant value, because tax is taken at vest and the cash that lands is smaller. Second, if the vests cannot close the gap to your target in time, top it up from salary savings rather than reaching for a riskier instrument or selling at the last minute.

Bottom line: down-payment funds need roughly 60 days of seasoning, so sell your vests and move the cash into a stable account two to three months before you make an offer, keeping the documentation to source the sales.

The tax cost of funding the down payment

Where the down-payment money comes from determines its tax cost, and the cheapest dollars are usually fresh vests.

When shares vest, the value is taxed as ordinary income right then, and that tax is typically handled through withholding — often by selling some shares to cover it, the sell-to-cover mechanic covered in the sell-to-cover decision guide. Crucially, your cost basis in the remaining shares equals the vest-date price. So if you sell those shares at or near vest, there is little or no capital gain, because the sale price is close to your basis. Selling at vest to fund a down payment is therefore close to tax-neutral on the capital-gains side — the income tax was already settled at vest.

The expensive path is selling appreciated, long-held shares to raise the down payment. Those trigger capital gains:

Holding period	Tax treatment	Rate
More than one year (long-term)	Preferential capital-gains rates	0%, 15%, or 20%, plus 3.8% NIIT for higher earners
One year or less (short-term)	Taxed as ordinary income	Your marginal ordinary rate

For a borrower whose only goal is to raise down-payment cash at the lowest tax cost, funding from fresh vests is the clean answer. The fuller decision — when to sell at vest versus hold — is laid out in should you sell RSUs at vest or hold. Selling long-held appreciated lots can still be the right move if you are deliberately diversifying a concentrated position, in which case the capital-gains cost is the price of reducing single-stock risk, and that trade-off is worth making on its own merits, not just to fund a house. If you live in a high-tax state, factor in the state hit too; the state-tax guide covers how that layers on.

Bottom line: funding a down payment from fresh vests is close to tax-neutral because basis equals the vest price, while selling long-held appreciated shares triggers capital-gains tax — so use new vests unless you are also intentionally diversifying.

How to prep your file

Everything above turns into a short prep list. Start it well before you shop for a home, because the binding constraint — two years of documented history and seasoned funds — is a function of time you cannot compress at the last minute.

1. Pull two years of vest statements and pay stubs. Your broker (Schwab, E*TRADE, Fidelity, Shareworks, or whoever administers your equity plan) can produce vest history showing dates, share counts, and values. Have these and recent pay stubs ready before the first conversation with a loan officer.
2. Pull your grant agreements showing the forward vesting schedule. This is what proves continuance — that you have several more years of scheduled vests. The underwriter needs to see the unvested portion and its dates.
3. Ask the loan officer, in writing, exactly how they treat RSU income. Specifically: do they require two years of history, how do they value the vests (averaging, haircuts), and how many years of forward vesting do they want for continuance? Get the answer before you rely on the income in your budget.
4. Choose lenders experienced with equity comp. Lenders who routinely serve employees at large public tech and finance firms know how to count RSU income; a small lender that rarely sees it may simply decline to count it rather than do the work. For jumbo loans this matters even more, because the rules are not standardized.
5. Sell and season the down-payment funds early. Two to three months ahead of your offer, with documentation kept for sourcing.
6. Keep your other debts low going in. DTI is the binding ratio, and a car payment or a large credit-card balance eats directly into the housing-payment room your RSU income just created.

Bottom line: the prep is mostly documentation and timing — two years of vest statements, forward grant schedules, a direct question to the lender, and seasoned funds — and almost all of it has to start months before you make an offer.

Common mistakes

A handful of errors recur, and each one quietly costs qualifying income or a closing:

• Walking in cold with no vest history assembled. The income exists, but if you cannot document two years of it the day underwriting asks, it may not get counted on your timeline.
• Selling RSUs the week before closing. The classic seasoning failure. The deposit gets flagged, and a scramble to source it delays the close.
• Assuming unvested grants count. They generally do not, or only at a deep discount. Budget off vested, documented income, not your total grant value.
• Ignoring the stock's volatility. A falling or erratic share price shrinks the income credit even with a clean history. Do not assume the lender will value your vests at the peak.
• Stretching to the maximum loan the RSU income unlocks. Qualifying for a $1.28 million loan does not mean a $1.28 million loan is wise — especially when the income backing it depends on the same employer and stock that would wobble in a downturn.
• Using one lender's "no" as the final answer. RSU treatment varies widely. A lender experienced with equity comp may count income that a generalist lender waves off.

The closing read

The borrowers who get the most out of RSU income at the mortgage stage are not the ones with the biggest grants. They are the ones who understood, two years early, that lenders count variable income on their own conservative terms — a documented two-year history, evidence of continuance, an averaged and sometimes discounted value — and who prepared their file accordingly. Done right, vested RSU income can nearly double the loan a lender will extend, turning equity comp from a side savings account into a genuine driver of how much house you can buy. Done carelessly, the same income goes uncounted because the paperwork was not ready, or a down payment stalls in underwriting because the cash landed too late to season. Pull the statements, ask the lender the direct questions, sell and season the funds early, and do not let the size of the loan you qualify for talk you into a loan larger than you should carry. The vests are the funding mechanism; your preparation is what lets the lender see them.

Cross-references

• Funding life goals with RSUs: house, 529, and goal-based selling
• What to do with vested RSUs: the diversification playbook
• Pay down the mortgage or invest your RSUs?
• Turning RSUs into a retirement corpus: 401(k) and Roth
• The RSU tax-saving playbook: harvesting, NUA, and DAFs
• US residents with US RSUs: the complete tax and strategy guide
• Should you sell RSUs at vest or hold? A decision framework
• Sell-to-cover, sell-all, or hold: the RSU withholding decision
• What is an RSU? Restricted Stock Units explained
• State tax optimization for US RSU holders
• Superfunding a 529: the complete guide

Critical disclaimer: this article reflects US federal tax and mortgage-underwriting practice as of June 2026 and is general information, not personalised advice. Lender treatment of RSU income, debt-to-income ceilings, fund-seasoning requirements, and capital-gains rates depend on your specific facts, your state, your lender, and your loan program (conforming versus jumbo or portfolio), and can change. Automated underwriting outcomes and individual lender overlays vary. Consult a licensed mortgage professional, CPA, or CFP before acting. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any specific security or to take on any specific loan.