You’ll need to provide a lot more evidence of what you earn if you’re self-employed than if you had an employer, simply because you don’t have anyone else to back up your claim. You’ll need to show SA302 statements – which provide evidence of your earnings and tax paid after submitting your self-assessment tax return – or tax year overviews for the preceding two or three years, which can be obtained from HMRC. Some lenders will require you to see your full accounts too.
If you’re a contractor you’ll also need to show evidence of current and any upcoming contracts (which lenders may use to estimate your annual income), and if you’re a company director, you’ll be expected to show proof of dividend payments or retained profits. No matter which category of self-employment you fall under, lenders will typically focus on average profit over the preceding two years to determine your mortgage eligibility, though they all have different methods. Income multiples and/or assessments of affordability will then be used to determine how much you’ll be able to borrow.
Yet it isn’t only evidence of your income that you’ll need to provide. As is the case for all borrowers, lenders will require several other documents too, including your passport and driving licence, council tax bill and recent utility bills to verify your identity, as well as six months’ worth of bank statements. The latter will be scrutinised, and you may be asked to provide more detail in certain areas – particularly around other borrowing commitments, childcare costs, household bills and other outgoings – to
prove affordability.
