How Much Cash Out Can You Take on a DSCR Loan?

Cash-out proceeds on a DSCR loan from The Fiirm are uncapped at or below 65% LTV, and capped at $1,000,000 once the LTV exceeds 65%. That is the whole answer to the headline question, and it is the number almost no DSCR overview will print.

But the ceiling on proceeds is only one of two constraints, and it is frequently not the one that decides your deal. The other is the maximum cash-out LTV itself, which comes off an eligibility grid driven by credit score, loan size, and DSCR — and can be cut further by occupancy, property type, and how the rental income is generated. On most files, one of those two constraints binds and the other is irrelevant. Knowing which is which before you order an appraisal is the difference between a clean approval and a resize three weeks in.

This is The Fiirm's DSCR program: 1-4 unit residential investment property, business purpose only, qualified on the property's cash flow rather than the borrower's personal income.

The two constraints, stated plainly

Constraint one is the proceeds ceiling — a dollar figure. Constraint two is the LTV cap — a percentage. They do not stack in any intuitive way, because the proceeds ceiling switches on and off depending on where you land against a 65% LTV line.

Read that carefully. It is not a sliding scale. It is a cliff at 65%. Below the line, the proceeds rule imposes no limit at all — your cash is bounded only by the arithmetic of the LTV and the program's maximum loan amount. Above the line, a hard $1,000,000 stop applies regardless of how large the property or the loan is, and it applies identically to standard single-property loans and to portfolio (blanket) loans.

The practical consequence is counterintuitive and expensive if you miss it: on a large enough property, borrowing at a higher LTV gets you less cash, not more.

Work the arithmetic on a free-and-clear property, ignoring closing costs for clarity. At 65% LTV, proceeds equal 65% of value with no cap. On a $2,000,000 property that is $1,300,000. Push the same file to 70% LTV and the loan is larger — $1,400,000 — but the proceeds rule now caps your cash at $1,000,000. You have taken on more leverage and walked away with $300,000 less.

Flip the property value down and the logic reverses. On a $1,200,000 free-and-clear property, 65% LTV yields $780,000 — under the cap either way — so moving up the LTV band genuinely adds cash, up to the point where 65% of value would have exceeded $1,000,000 on its own. That crossover sits a little over $1.5 million of value. Below it, higher LTV means more money. Above it, the 65% line is where your maximum cash lives.

There is a second, quieter bound on the "unlimited" side. Uncapped does not mean infinite — the program's maximum loan amounts still apply. Standard single-property loans run to a maximum of $2,000,000 with a $100,000 minimum; portfolio loans run to a maximum of $6,250,000 with a $500,000 minimum. At or below 65% LTV your proceeds are limited by those loan-amount ceilings and by whatever existing debt is being paid off, not by a proceeds rule.

What actually counts as a cash-out transaction

Before either constraint applies, the file has to be classified as cash-out. That classification is mechanical and it catches people who think they are doing a rate-and-term.

Two things follow. First, the trigger is 10% of the loan amount in net proceeds as the underwriting model computes them — not as your spreadsheet computes them. The guidelines say the same thing from the other direction in the Loan Purpose section: the loan purpose for a borrower who receives greater than 10% cash-out, based on the final underwriting model and memo, will be defined as refinance/cash-out. A rate-and-term that generates an over-generous escrow refund or a large incidental disbursement can be reclassified, and the reclassification pulls in the cash-out LTV column, which is lower than the rate-and-term column at every tier.

Second, a free-and-clear property held more than six months is a cash-out refinance by definition, even though there is no existing debt being refinanced. There is no "there was no mortgage, so it's rate-and-term" argument available.

The LTV cap: credit score, loan size, and DSCR

The cash-out LTV ceiling comes from the eligibility grid, and it is a distinct column from purchase and rate-and-term. Two variables set it before anything else touches it: minimum credit score and the loan amount tier. A third — whether the DSCR is at or above 1.00, or in the 0.75 to 0.99 band — moves the whole table down.

Note what happens at the bottom of the score range. The 660 tier is one-unit only — 2-4 unit properties do not appear at 660 in either grid. And at 660 with a loan above the $1.5 million tier and a DSCR at or above 1.00, the maximum cash-out LTV is 60%, which sits below the 65% line. That borrower's proceeds are uncapped by the proceeds rule and constrained entirely by leverage.

Maximum cash-out LTV by minimum credit score, standard loans, DSCR at or above 1.00, loan amount tier of $1,500,000.

Move to the larger loan tier and every row drops five points:

Maximum cash-out LTV by minimum credit score, standard loans, DSCR at or above 1.00, loan amount tier of $2,000,000.

The interaction with property type is direct and easy to miss: a 2-4 unit property with a FICO at or below 740 requires a DSCR of at least 1.00. That closes the entire sub-1.00 DSCR grid to a large share of small multifamily files. If you are running a duplex or fourplex cash-out with a 700 or 720 score, the 0.75–0.99 columns above are not available to you — you are underwriting to 1.00x or the file does not work.

Separately, DSCR below 1.00 is not permitted at all for inexperienced investors, for vacant properties (with 2-4 unit properties needing at least 50% occupancy), or for portfolio loans. And any loan amount under $150,000 requires a minimum DSCR of 1.25x, which quietly rules out a lot of small cash-outs on low-basis rentals.

Reductions that cut the LTV before proceeds ever matter

Several characteristics reduce the maximum LTV off the grid. These apply first; the proceeds ceiling applies to whatever LTV survives.

The short-term rental line is the one that reshapes a cash-out most often. If you are qualifying on short-term rental income, your ceiling is 60% LTV — below the 65% line — so the $1,000,000 proceeds cap is structurally unreachable and the LTV is the only thing standing between you and your cash. Short-term rental files also carry a minimum DSCR of 1.25 and an additional six months of PITIA reserves, and a 2-4 unit property is deemed short-term rental if 50% or more of the units are being used as short-term rentals.

The vacancy reduction is the one that surprises people mid-file. Occupancy is defined by unit count: one occupied unit for a single-family, two for a two-family, two for a three-family, three for a four-family. Fall below that and the property is unoccupied/unleased, which costs 5% of LTV on any refinance. For refinances and cash-outs where the DSCR is below 1.00, the occupancy requirement tightens further to a stated minimum count per property size.

What the proceeds may be used for

This is a business-purpose program, and the use-of-proceeds rule is not decorative.

The "must support and not conflict" language is the operative part. A file that includes a business purpose affidavit and, elsewhere, an email describing the proceeds as funding a personal purchase is a file with a conflict in it. The affidavit is not a form that overrides the rest of the documentation; the rest of the documentation has to agree with it.

The broader occupancy and purpose framing sits in the Loan Purpose section: all loans must be for business purposes only and must be certified as such by the borrower or guarantor, and no property can be occupied by any of the borrowers or guarantors, primary or secondary. The guidelines list common occupancy red flags, including borrowers currently living rent free or renting their primary residence, a subject property that could reasonably function as a second home, documents showing the subject as a current primary residence, and a subject property whose value significantly exceeds the value of the borrower's primary residence. The Fiirm reserves the right to decline any loan that may indicate the property is not intended exclusively for business purposes.

Two specific permissions and one specific prohibition are worth knowing:

Cash-out may be used for reserves if FICO > 700. As written that is a strictly greater-than test, which is a distinction worth noting given that 700 is also a grid tier. Where it applies, it matters: reserves are three months of PITIA on the subject property at DSCR at or above 1.00, six months at DSCR below 1.00, with an additional six months for short-term rentals. Gift funds are not permitted to meet reserve requirements, and funds used for down payment and closing costs cannot be counted toward reserves.

Cash-out proceeds may not be used to satisfy judgments, tax liens, charge-offs, or past-due accounts. This one closes a door people expect to be open. Those items must be satisfied or brought current prior to or at closing — but not with money from this loan. If a borrower's plan is to clear a tax lien with the refinance proceeds, the plan does not work here and needs to be replaced before the file goes in.

Seasoning, and what value the LTV is measured against

How long the property has been owned changes what number the LTV percentage is applied to — which changes your proceeds without any rule about proceeds being involved.

For standard loans, if the property has been owned three to six months, the LTV is calculated against the lower of cost basis or appraised value. There is one relief valve: if cost basis exceeds the purchase price by 120% or more, the appraised value can be used to calculate LTV — but the total loan amount is still limited to no more than the cost basis. If the property has been owned more than six months, appraised value is used.

Cost basis is defined broadly: purchase price, borrower-paid hard and soft costs expended to date including capital expenditures, and customary arms-length borrower-paid closing costs and fees. Capital expenditure means a long-term investment that improves or increases the value of the rental — a new roof, new HVAC. Demolition, debris removal, fixing lights and outlets, and carpet removal are explicitly not capital expenditure. Mortgage broker fees, origination fees, and points are excluded from cost basis. Where closing costs are not documented or clearly verifiable at closing, up to 2% of the purchase price may be added for the cost basis assessment.

One more seasoning rule attaches specifically to cash-out: for properties owned more than six months and less than one year, the loan must have a minimum DSCR of 1.00x. That removes the sub-1.00 DSCR grid entirely for cash-outs in that ownership window.

Putting it together

The order of operations on a cash-out file looks like this. Start with the grid ceiling from credit score, loan amount tier, and DSCR band. Apply any reductions — vacancy, non-warrantable condo, short-term rental income, inexperienced investor. That gives you a maximum LTV. Then apply the maximum loan amount for standard or portfolio. Then, and only then, check the proceeds ceiling: at or below 65% LTV nothing further applies; above 65% LTV, $1,000,000 is the stop.

If your resulting LTV is at or under 65% — which happens automatically on short-term rental files, on the 660/$2,000,000 tier, and on plenty of files after a vacancy or condo reduction — the proceeds rule will never be the binding constraint. If your LTV is above 65% and the property is large, the proceeds rule almost certainly is.

What this page does not do

This page reports what The Fiirm's DSCR program guidelines say about cash-out proceeds limits, the LTV grid that sits behind them, and the permitted uses of proceeds. It is not a quote, a pre-approval, or a commitment to lend, and none of it is legal, tax, or investment advice.

It does not price anything. Rate, points, and prepayment structure are separate from eligibility, and nothing above tells you what a given structure costs.

It does not cover the full program. Credit requirements, trade line minimums, housing history, significant derogatory credit waiting periods, entity and guarantor eligibility, appraisal and title requirements, state-level restrictions, and the full ineligible property list all sit outside this page and can each stop a file on their own.

It does not resolve individual files. The guidelines note that single loan variances to program eligibility may be acceptable in some cases when strong compensating factors exist, and that underwriting is a manual process. Whether any particular deal gets one is not something a published page can answer.

Where the guidelines are silent, this page is silent. Figures not stated in the program guidelines have not been supplied here, and nothing above has been rounded, extended, or inferred from a rule that does not say it. All figures are from The Fiirm DSCR program guidelines, version 28, effective 5/1/2026.

Guideline DSCR V28 · Reviewed August 31, 2026

Published August 31, 2026 · Updated August 31, 2026