Yes — a rental-property DSCR loan on a 1-4 unit property is available to borrowers who are in the United States on a non-permanent status, but only on a closed list of visa classes. The program admits US citizens, Permanent Qualified Resident Aliens, and Non-Permanent Residents Qualified Aliens, and for that third group the guideline names the visa types it will accept: E-1, E-2, E-3, EB-5, G-1 through G-5, H-1, L-1, NATO, O-1, R-1, TN NAFTA.
That list is the whole test on the status side. If your visa class appears on it, your status is not what stops the loan. If it does not appear, no amount of down payment, reserves or rental income fixes it under this program.
This matters most because the answer is different on the commercial side of the house. On a 5+ unit or mixed-use commercial loan, applicants in the country on temporary status are excluded outright. Move the same borrower to a 1-4 unit rental and there is a path. The property type, not the borrower, is what changes the answer.
A note before anything else: this page is about loan program eligibility only. It is not immigration advice, and nothing here should be read as an opinion about your status, your renewal odds, or what any filing means. Immigration questions go to an immigration attorney. We read documents; we do not interpret status.
The three status buckets the program uses
The DSCR guideline sorts every individual borrower and guarantor into one of three buckets under its Residency section, and each bucket has its own evidence requirement.
| Bucket | How the guideline names it | What you document | Eligible on 1-4 units |
|---|---|---|---|
| US citizen | US Citizens | Standard identity documentation | Yes |
| Green card holder | Permanent Qualified Resident Aliens | One of four named residency documents | Yes |
| Visa holder, non-permanent | Non-Permanent Residents Qualified Aliens | Current visa from the named list, plus EAD where applicable | Yes, if the visa class is on the list |
The Eligibility section says the same thing from the guarantor side: guarantors must be US citizens or non-US citizens who are lawfully present in the United States, and that includes both Permanent Qualified Resident Aliens and Non-Permanent Qualified Aliens.
Reading the list literally
Two things about that list are worth saying plainly, because both cost people time.
First, it is a closed list. The guideline does not say "visa types include" or "such as." It names classes. A class that does not appear on that list is not admitted by the Residency section, and the section offers no residual category for everyone else. If your visa class is not one of the ones printed above, treat the program as closed to you on status until we confirm otherwise in writing on your specific file.
Second, the guideline writes some entries at the class level rather than the sub-class level. It says H-1, not a sub-class. It says G-1 through G-5 as a range. It says TN NAFTA. If the stamp in your passport carries a suffix or a variant the guideline does not spell out, do not assume either direction — send us the visa page before you spend money on an appraisal, and we will get the eligibility confirmed on the file rather than argue it later against a rate lock.
The six-month rule, and why it is the thing that actually trips people
A current visa is the baseline. The rule that catches borrowers is what happens when the visa is near its end.
The guideline requires that the visa be current, and it adds a specific trigger: if the visa will expire within six months following the close date, additional documentation is required. That documentation is evidence that the proper extension steps have been followed per the USCIS website, along with proof of payment receipt and proof that the extension was done in the timeframe required by USCIS.
Read that carefully. The measuring point is the close date, not the application date. A visa that has eight months left when you write the offer can easily have fewer than six months left at closing on a purchase that takes a normal amount of time to underwrite, appraise and clear title. The file that was clean at application becomes a file that needs extension evidence — and if the extension has not been filed yet, you are now waiting on a government process in the middle of a transaction with a contract date on it.
The fix is entirely in your control and costs nothing: check your expiration date against a realistic close date at the very start, not at the end. If the gap is under six months, gather the extension evidence — the filing proof, the payment receipt, the timing proof — before you go under contract.
EAD and employer sponsorship
The guideline handles work authorization in one compact paragraph, and it has two moving parts.
When applicable, a valid Employment Authorization Document (EAD) is required for US employment if the borrower is not sponsored by a current employer. The trigger is sponsorship, not visa class — the question the underwriter is answering is whether a current employer stands behind your authorization to work, and if not, the EAD is the substitute evidence.
Then the sponsorship path: if the visa will expire within six months of loan application, it is acceptable to obtain a letter from the employer documenting the borrower's continued employment and continued visa renewal sponsorship. And a matching condition that people miss — the employer on the loan application must be the same as on the unexpired visa.
That last sentence is a hard consistency check, not a formality. If you changed employers and your visa still names the prior sponsor, the application and the visa will not agree, and the file will stop there until the discrepancy is documented. Flag it up front. Do not let an underwriter discover it from the visa page after the appraisal is paid for.
What a permanent resident documents instead
If you hold permanent residency, the visa list does not apply to you. The guideline instead names four acceptable forms of evidence of permanent residency, and it is worth knowing which one you have because two of them carry extra conditions.
| Evidence accepted | Condition attached |
|---|---|
| Alien Registration Receipt Card I-151 (green card) | None stated |
| Alien Registration Receipt Card I-551, Resident Alien Card, with no expiration date on the back | None stated |
| Alien Registration Receipt Card I-551, Conditional Resident Alien Card, with an expiration date on the back | Must be accompanied by a copy of the filed INS Form I-751, petition to remove conditions |
| Non-expired foreign passport with a non-expired stamp reading "Processed for I-551 Temporary Evidence of Lawful Admission for Permanent Residence. Valid until [date]. Employment Authorized." | The stamp must be valid for a minimum of three years |
The conditional card is the one that surprises people. A card with an expiration date on the back is not, by itself, the document the guideline accepts — it accepts the card plus the filed I-751. Pull that copy now if it applies to you.
Where the 1-4 unit answer diverges from commercial
This is the contrast that makes the question worth asking at all.
On the commercial side — small balance commercial, meaning the 5+ unit and mixed-use programs — the eligible-borrower language is narrow. Loans are available to for-profit legal entities wholly owned by individuals who are US citizens or permanent resident aliens. Foreign nationals sit on the ineligible list. And the ineligible list adds a sentence that closes the door completely: applicants in the country on a temporary status, work visa, or any other form of non-permanent residency are not eligible for financing.
There is no visa list on that program because there is nothing for a list to admit. Even the identity documentation the commercial file asks for reflects it — a US passport or passport card, a permanent resident card or alien registration receipt card, or a driver's license along with a birth certificate, voter registration or Social Security card. No line item contemplates a visa.
So the same borrower, same money, same credit, gets two different answers depending on what they are buying. A duplex or a fourplex is a 1-4 unit rental and runs on the DSCR program, where a named visa class is admitted. A six-unit building is commercial, where temporary status is excluded outright. If you are on a visa and you are choosing between a fourplex and a small apartment building, that structural line is a real input into the decision, not a technicality.
We cover the commercial side in detail, including how entity and trust ownership is treated there, in [can a foreign national or trust get a commercial real estate loan](/blog/can-a-foreign-national-or-trust-get-a-commercial-real-estate-loan). What follows here stays on 1-4 units.
The Social Security Number requirement, and one place the text pulls against itself
The Eligibility section states flatly that all guarantors must have a valid Social Security Number. There is no ITIN alternative in the current text, and no exception written for any status bucket. Practically, this means a visa holder is admitted by the Residency section only if they also clear the SSN requirement — being on the visa list is necessary, not sufficient.
There is also an internal tension in the current guideline that we would rather name than paper over.
The guarantor eligibility bullets say guarantors must be US citizens or non-US citizens lawfully present in the United States, including both Permanent Qualified Resident Aliens and Non-Permanent Qualified Aliens. Two bullets later, a separate sentence about lending to individuals and legal entities domiciled in the United States says the individual must be a US citizen or permanent resident alien and have a valid Social Security Number — which is narrower, and does not mention the non-permanent bucket at all.
The Residency section and the guarantor bullet both admit non-permanent qualified aliens on the named visa list. The individual-borrower sentence does not. We are not going to smooth that over with a guess about which one governs your file. What we do instead is get it answered in writing, on your specific structure, before you spend anything.
Worth knowing for context: the current version of the DSCR guideline has no Foreign National program in it. Its own change log records that the Foreign National sections were removed on 3/14/2024. Earlier versions carried a separate track with its own LTV cap and its own credit treatment; the current text does not. What remains is the three-bucket residency structure above — citizen, permanent resident, and non-permanent qualified alien on a named visa — all of which require lawful presence and, per the guarantor bullet, a valid SSN.
What your status does not change
Once you are through the residency gate, the program does not run a different rulebook for you. Every requirement below applies the same way it applies to a citizen borrower, and these are usually the requirements that actually decide the file.
Credit. A minimum FICO of 660 is required for all guarantors. With one individual guarantor, the middle score sets the rate and the LTV. With several, the guarantor with the lowest middle score sets rate and LTV, and every other guarantor still has to clear 660. You cannot have only one credit score or less than 24 months of credit history. Authorized-user accounts and non-traditional credit do not count as trade lines.
Investor experience. First-time homebuyers are not eligible — defined as someone who has not owned a residential property at any time in the prior three years. Inexperienced investors are permitted but carry their own box: minimum DSCR of 1.0, maximum LTV 75%, maximum loan of $1,000,000, must currently own a primary residence for at least one year, and no blanket mortgages.
Reserves. Three months of PITIA on the subject property when DSCR is 1.0 or higher, six months when DSCR is below 1.0, and an additional six months for a short-term rental. Gift funds cannot meet reserves. Funds used for down payment and closing costs cannot be counted twice as reserves. Cash-out proceeds may be used for reserves only if FICO is above 700.
Entity requirements. Entities must be legal entities domiciled in the United States — LLCs, LPs, partnerships, corporations, and revocable trusts only — with natural-person members, in good standing, and US-based. Irrevocable trusts, blind trusts, land trusts, community land trusts, guardianships and life estates are ineligible regardless of who owns them. So are trusts or LLCs whose members are other LLCs, corporations, partnerships or trusts where no natural person can be established, and any structure where a power of attorney is used. Borrowers or guarantors with diplomatic immunity status are ineligible — which is worth reading alongside the G-1 through G-5 and NATO entries on the visa list, since those are the classes where the question is most likely to come up on the same file.
The property still has to work. All loans are recourse. Anyone with 25% or more direct or indirect ownership in the borrowing entity signs a guaranty. The lease has to be with an eligible tenant, meaning not you, not an affiliate, not an officer or manager of the borrowing entity, and not a family member. Minimum DSCR is 1.25x on loans under $150,000 and 1.25x on short-term rentals.
Packaging a visa-holder file so it moves
The sequence below is ordered by what stops files, not by what is convenient to collect.
1. Visa page first. Class, issue date, expiration date, and the employer named on it. This is the one document that determines whether anything else is worth doing.
2. Expiration math against a realistic close date. Under six months at close means extension evidence: filing proof per the USCIS website, payment receipt, and proof the extension was filed within the USCIS timeframe.
3. EAD, if you are not sponsored by a current employer. If you are sponsored and the visa is inside six months of application, the employer letter covering continued employment and continued renewal sponsorship instead.
4. Employer name reconciliation. The employer on the application must match the employer on the unexpired visa. If it does not, say so in the first conversation.
5. SSN for every guarantor. Not one guarantor — every guarantor.
6. Entity documents, if you are titling in an LLC: domicile, good standing, natural-person members, and the ownership chart that determines who signs the guaranty.
Get the first four right and a visa-holder file underwrites like any other DSCR file. Get them wrong and you find out at the worst possible moment, which is after the appraisal invoice and inside a contract deadline.
What this page does not do
This is not immigration advice and does not address your status, your renewal, your filings, or the consequences of any of them. Those questions belong with an immigration attorney, and we will tell you the same thing on a phone call.
It is not an approval, a pre-approval, a rate quote or a commitment to lend. Nothing here reserves terms or holds pricing.
It does not resolve the internal inconsistency described above between the guarantor eligibility bullet and the individual-borrower sentence. We flag it because it is real; the resolution comes in writing on your file, from us, before you spend money.
It does not cover the commercial entity and trust rules, foreign-national commercial treatment, or the ownership-structure questions on 5+ unit and mixed-use properties. Those live on the commercial post linked above.
It does not price your loan. LTV, rate and maximum loan amount are set by the credit grid, the DSCR tier, unit count, transaction purpose and property characteristics, plus LTV reductions that apply to unleased units, short-term rentals and non-warrantable condos. It does not cover tax treatment, entity formation, state licensing, or anything else that belongs to your attorney or accountant.
And it does not promise an exception. The guideline allows single-loan variances in some cases where strong compensating factors exist, and it says items not addressed in the matrix are referred up. That is a real path and it is also a discretionary one. Do not build a purchase around 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.