No. A DSCR file cannot qualify on authorized-user accounts alone. Our program guidelines state it directly: authorized user accounts are not allowed as an acceptable trade line. The credit score those accounts produced can be perfectly strong, and the file will still stop, because a DSCR credit review runs two separate tests and an authorized-user history passes the first one while failing the second.
Nothing about this is a judgment on the borrower. Being added as an authorized user is ordinary. It is most often a parent adding a child to a long-standing card, sometimes a spouse, sometimes an employer. It works exactly as intended for the thing it was designed to do, which is give someone a scoring file. It was never designed to prove that the borrower himself repays debt, and that is the specific thing a DSCR file has to prove.
This page explains where the stop sits, why the rule reads the way it does, what happens to a file that looks fine on the score line and thin everywhere else, and what the realistic path forward actually looks like — including the part most people get wrong, which is the order in which you fix it.
Two tests, not one
Most borrowers arrive thinking credit is a single number with a pass mark. In a DSCR file it is two independent gates, and clearing one tells you nothing about the other.
The score test. A minimum FICO of 660 is required for all guarantors. Where there is only one individual guarantor, the middle score is used to set interest rate and LTV. Where there are multiple borrowers or guarantors, rate and LTV are based on the guarantor with the lowest middle score, and all other borrowers and guarantors still have to carry a minimum FICO of 660 in their own right.
The depth test. Separately, the file has to show trade lines that belong to the borrower. A minimum of one trade line must be active, meaning open. Each borrower and each guarantor must meet the minimum trade line requirements individually. And authorized user accounts do not count toward any of it.
An authorized-user file is built to clear the first gate. That is what piggybacking on a seasoned account does — it imports age, limit and payment history into the scoring model. It does not import obligation. When the underwriter subtracts the AU accounts and looks at what is left, the depth test is decided on that remainder.
Why the rule reads this way
The reasoning is narrow and it is worth stating plainly, because borrowers usually assume the exclusion is about scoring integrity or gaming. It is not.
An authorized user has use of an account. An authorized user has no liability on it. The primary account holder owes the balance, made the payments, and can remove the authorized user at any time without notice or consent. Every month of clean history on that trade line is evidence of the primary's behaviour under pressure, not the borrower's.
A DSCR loan is underwritten on the property's cash flow, but it is still a recourse loan. Any principal or controlling party with a 25% or greater direct or indirect ownership interest in the borrowing entity has to sign a guaranty. The guaranty is a personal promise to pay. So the file needs some record of the person making that promise having actually paid something in his own name. An authorized-user trade line, however long and however clean, is silent on that question.
That is also why non-traditional credit — rent ledgers, utility letters, phone accounts — is excluded in the same breath. It is not that those payments do not matter in life. It is that the program is a manual underwrite against a defined credit standard, and the standard is built on reported trade lines the borrower is liable for.
The second stop, and the one that actually kills most AU files
The trade line exclusion is the rule people find first. There is a second line in the borrower eligibility section that ends more files, and it sits earlier in the process:
A borrower cannot have only one credit score, or less than 24 months of credit history.
This is a hard eligibility stop, listed alongside items like outstanding tax liens and material unpaid judgments. It is not a pricing adjustment and it is not a compensating-factor conversation.
The reason it bites authorized-user files specifically is mechanical. Being added to a seasoned account can generate scores at all three bureaus quickly, so the borrower does not trip the "only one credit score" half of the test — tri-merged reports come back with three usable numbers, often good ones. But the underlying file may still be under 24 months old. The borrower looks like a 720 with three scores and turns out, on the depth read, to be fourteen months into having a credit identity at all.
What counts and what does not
| What the credit report shows | Counts toward the trade line requirement | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Open account in the borrower's own name | Yes, subject to the seasoning tests | The borrower is liable and the payment record is his |
| Closed account in the borrower's own name | Yes where the guideline's test says "opened or closed" — but at least one trade line must still be active | Closed history is still the borrower's own history |
| Authorized user account | No | Explicitly excluded; evidences the primary account holder's behaviour |
| Non-traditional credit (rent, utilities, phone) | No | Explicitly excluded as an acceptable trade line |
| A stronger co-guarantor's trade lines | No — they do not transfer | Each borrower or guarantor must meet the minimum trade line requirements individually |
The counting rules themselves — how many trade lines you need and what seasoning each route demands — are set out in a matrix we cover separately in [how many trade lines you need for a DSCR loan](/blog/how-many-tradelines-do-you-need-for-a-dscr-loan). This page is about what is eligible to be counted in the first place. The order matters: eligibility of a trade line is decided before it is counted, and an AU account never reaches the counting stage.
The plan that does not work
The most common response, once a borrower understands the exclusion, is to bring in a partner — a parent, a spouse, a business associate with twenty years of clean credit — and put them on the loan.
This does not solve the problem, and it is worth being precise about why.
Each borrower and guarantor must meet the minimum trade line requirements. The requirement is individual, not aggregate. Adding a deep-file guarantor does not lend depth to a thin-file guarantor; it adds a second person who must independently pass. If the thin-file borrower is a 25% or greater owner of the borrowing entity, or is a managing member or controlling holder, he has to sign a guaranty and therefore has to clear the credit standard himself.
The score side works the same way and in some respects works against you. With multiple guarantors, rate and LTV are set by the guarantor with the lowest middle score. Bringing in a 790 does not lift the file to 790. Everyone else still needs 660, and pricing follows the bottom of the group.
The order-of-operations trap
Here is the part that costs people months.
Once a borrower learns that AU accounts do not count, a reasonable instinct is to have the primary account holder remove them — clean the report up, stop the confusion. Do not do this before you understand what it does to the score.
Removing an authorized-user account removes everything it contributed: the account age, the limit, the utilisation cushion, the payment history. On a file where the AU accounts were doing most of the scoring work, the score can fall materially and immediately. The trade line exclusion did not change; you have simply taken the 660 test from comfortably passed to possibly failed, while the depth problem is still unsolved.
The sequence that works is the opposite. Leave the AU accounts alone. Open and season trade lines in the borrower's own name alongside them. Let the own-name history build to where the depth test is satisfied on its own merits. At that point removing the AU accounts is optional and, in most files, unnecessary — they are simply ignored for trade line purposes and do no harm sitting there.
The realistic path forward
There is no shortcut here, and we would rather say so than sell one. The binding constraint is time, and the clock only starts on accounts the borrower opens in his own name.
Start the clock immediately. The depth test is measured in months. Every month you spend deciding is a month the file is not aging. At least one trade line has to be active, so the account has to be open and reporting, not closed and historical.
Know which route you are aiming at. The guideline offers more than one way to satisfy the trade line test, and they demand different things — one route leans on a longer-seasoned trade line, another on a satisfactory mortgage rating for at least 12 months, opened or closed, within the last 24 months plus an additional open trade line. A borrower who has held a mortgage, even one now paid off, is often much closer than he thinks. A borrower with no mortgage history at all is on the longer road. The full matrix is in the sibling page linked above.
Understand what the guideline does not tell you. It sets the counts and the seasoning. It does not tell you which products to open, what limits to seek, what a secured card does versus an installment loan, or how quickly any of it will report. We will not invent that guidance. Those are questions for the borrower's own bank or a credit professional, and anyone giving you a confident timeline for score movement is guessing.
Re-pull at the right moment. Personal credit reports for all individual borrowers and guarantors must be dated within 120 days of completing final underwriting. The age-of-documents section states the credit report validity slightly differently, as 120 days from the note date. The document carries both phrasings; plan against the tighter reading and expect the report to be re-pulled if the file sits.
When the score clears but the rest of the profile is still thin
A borrower rebuilding from an authorized-user file often lands at the bottom of the credit grid and, at the same time, at the bottom of the experience grid. These stack, and it is better to see them together.
At 660 the published grid permits a one-unit property. The 1-4 unit rows sit at 680 and 700. So a borrower who rebuilds to exactly the 660 floor should plan on a single-unit deal, not a duplex. Separately, a 2-4 unit property with a FICO at or below 740 requires a DSCR of at least 1.0.
The experience overlay is the other half. Borrowers who do not meet the experienced-investor definition are treated as inexperienced investors, and those loans carry additional criteria: a minimum DSCR of 1.0, maximum LTV of 75%, a maximum loan of $1,000,000, blanket mortgages not permitted, and the borrower must currently own a primary residence for at least one year. First-time homebuyers are not eligible at all — defined as a borrower who has not owned a residential property at any time during the prior three years.
That last pair is the sharp edge for a young borrower on AU credit. Thin file, no prior property ownership, and no primary residence held for a year is not one problem. It is three, and two of them are eligibility stops rather than pricing adjustments. Worth mapping honestly before anyone spends money.
What to do this week
If you are the borrower, pull your own tri-merged report and mark every account as own-name or authorized user. Then count only the own-name column, and note the open date of the oldest one. That single number — months since the oldest own-name account opened — tells you most of what you need to know about where you stand.
If you are a broker with this file, do that read before you take an application fee or order anything. The credit depth question is answerable in one conversation and one report pull. It is the cheapest disqualifier in the program to check and one of the most expensive to discover late.
If the own-name column is short, the file is not dead. It is early. The rule is a timing rule, not a character judgment, and the borrower who starts the clock this month is materially closer than the one who spends the month arguing with it.
What this page does not do
This page is not an approval, a pre-approval, a commitment to lend, a rate quote or a term sheet. Nothing here reserves pricing or an LTV.
It does not reproduce the trade line counting matrix. How many trade lines each route requires, and the seasoning attached to each, is covered in the sibling page linked above.
It does not tell you how to build credit. It states what the program requires and what it excludes. Which accounts to open, in what order, at what limits, and how fast they will report are outside the guideline and outside our lane — take those to your own bank or a credit professional.
It does not address derogatory credit events, which run on separate waiting periods, nor housing-history requirements beyond noting they exist, nor foreign national or non-permanent resident scenarios.
It does not address income documentation, reserves, the DSCR calculation itself, appraisal or property eligibility, entity formation, or how a given state treats any of it. Ownership structure, operating agreements and anything touching liability are questions for your attorney; tax treatment is a question for your accountant; zoning and permitted use belong to your municipality.
Program terms described here reflect The Fiirm's DSCR guidelines as published in Version 28. Guidelines change, and a specific file is only ever decided by underwriting on the documents in front of it.
Guideline DSCR V28 · Reviewed August 31, 2026
Published August 31, 2026 · Updated August 31, 2026
How to use this guide
This article is educational guidance, not an offer or commitment to lend. Rules, property facts, credit, leverage, documentation, and full underwriting still control any actual scenario.