Twelve months of short-term rental operating history is the documentation standard on a refinance. If you have less than twelve months, the file is not automatically dead — a property owned at least six months but less than twelve may be considered on a single-loan variance basis, with the income calculation decided at our discretion. Below six months, the program describes no path at all.
That is the answer. The rest of this page is what actually decides your file: which documents satisfy the twelve-month requirement, how a month with no bookings is treated, what a host at eight months should expect, and why none of it applies to a purchase.
The separate question of how much documented income survives — the operating haircut and the market-rent ceiling — is covered in [how lenders discount Airbnb income on a DSCR loan](/blog/how-lenders-discount-airbnb-income-on-a-dscr-loan). Read that for the arithmetic; read this for whether you get to the arithmetic at all.
The twelve-month window is a refinance rule
Our program determines gross monthly rental income differently depending on transaction type, and short-term rental history only enters the calculation on a refinance.
On a refinance, gross monthly rental income is set from the most recent 12-month record of what the property actually collected. On a purchase, it is set from the appraiser's comparable rent survey and nothing else. Hosts routinely apply the wrong rule to their own situation.
The two accepted documentation methods
The program names exactly two ways to evidence twelve months of short-term rental collections on a refinance. They are alternatives, not a stack — you satisfy one or the other.
| Method | What it is | What it must show |
|---|---|---|
| Third-party rental history statement | The most recent 12-month rental history statement from a third-party rental or management service | It must identify the subject property or unit, and the rents collected for the previous 12 months |
| Borrower bank statements | The most recent 12 months of bank statements from the borrower | Rental deposits evidencing the collections |
Both are then subject to the market-rent ceiling covered in the sibling post linked above. What matters here is that the document has to survive on its own terms first.
Two details in that table do a lot of work.
"Third-party." A spreadsheet you maintain is not a third-party statement, and neither is a summary you export and retype. The statement comes from the rental or management service — the platform transaction report, or a property manager's owner statement.
"Identify the subject property/unit." This is the single most common failure in a short-term rental file. A host who runs four listings pulls a consolidated annual earnings summary showing total payouts across the portfolio. That document cannot be used, because it does not isolate the subject. The platform-side fix is to pull the per-listing transaction report rather than the account-level tax or earnings summary. If your management company reports at the owner level rather than the property level, ask them for a per-property owner statement before you order the appraisal.
One more line sits underneath both methods: the borrower must provide rental records for the subject property to support monthly deposits. On the bank statement route, deposits are not self-explaining — a deposit in July is a number until something ties it to bookings at the subject property. Expect to pair the statements with the underlying booking or payout records.
Zero months are counted, not skipped
This is where the twelve-month rule bites hardest, and where most general guidance on short-term rental financing is simply silent.
The guideline repeats the point in a footnote to its own worked example: if rent was not received during a month, use $0 for that month. The qualifying figure is the average of twelve months of rental collection history — twelve months, not twelve months of bookings.
The practical consequence is that seasonality is not neutral. It is a drag.
A mountain property that runs hard from December through March and sits empty in May, June and October does not get to average its four strong months. It averages twelve, three of which are zero. A coastal property closed for renovation in February and March carries two zeros even though nothing was wrong with the demand, and a host who blocked the calendar for personal use over the holidays takes the same hit.
There is no stated carve-out for renovation months, blocked owner-use months, or a paused listing. If the money did not arrive, the month is a zero.
Six to eleven months of history
Here is the exact language, and the hedging in it is load-bearing.
Note what it does not say. It does not say a nine-month history is annualized. It does not say the available months are averaged and treated as twelve. It says the file may be considered on a variance, and that the income calculation is discretionary. A host at eight months cannot plan around a number, because no number is defined.
The broader underwriting rule sets the standard a variance is judged against: in some cases, single-loan variances to program eligibility may be acceptable when strong compensating factors exist to offset the risk. A variance must be granted. It is not automatic, and a file does not earn one by being close to the line. Manual underwrite is required on every loan in this program, which is what makes a variance possible at all — but manual is not the same as flexible.
What that means for a host with six to eleven months of history:
| Months of documented history | What the program provides |
|---|---|
| 12 or more | Standard treatment. Average the 12-month collection history, subject to the market-rent ceiling |
| 6 to 11 | May be considered on a single-loan variance. Income calculation is discretionary. Strong compensating factors are what the request is judged on |
| Under 6 | The program describes no variance lane for short-term rental income at this ownership length |
The honest advice for a host at eight or nine months: price both paths. One is the variance request, where you submit and find out. The other is waiting until you cross twelve months, which converts a discretionary decision into a defined calculation. If the wait is short, waiting is often cheaper — not because the variance will fail, but because you cannot budget against a figure nobody will quote in advance.
On a purchase, your history does not matter
This surprises hosts who have built a strong operating record and expect to carry it into an acquisition.
On a purchase, gross monthly rental income is determined by a 1007 or 1025 Comparable Rent Schedule survey prepared by the appraiser, reflecting long-term or short-term market rents. The guideline states the point without qualification: even if the property has short-term rental history, market rent will be used.
So a property grossing $6,000 a month on a platform, in a market where the appraiser's comparable rent survey supports $2,000, qualifies against $2,000. The seller's twelve months of statements are not a document the program has a use for on a purchase.
The logic is structural. The history belongs to the seller's operation — their pricing, their reviews, their calendar management — and none of that transfers with the deed. Under a new owner the property has no operating record, so the program gives it none.
What you can influence is the survey itself. The comparable rent schedule may reflect long-term or short-term market rents. In a real short-term rental market that distinction matters, and a survey that develops short-term comparables where they exist produces a different figure than one defaulting to long-term rents. Raise it before the report is written, not after.
Who is allowed to use short-term rental income at all
Before the documentation question matters, there is a gate.
An experienced investor is defined one of two ways. Either the borrower or primary guarantor has a history of owning and managing commercial or non-owner-occupied residential real estate for at least 12 consecutive months in the most recent three years, or the borrower or primary guarantor has had ownership in three or more properties, each for at least twelve months, over the past 24 months. A borrower who does not meet either definition is an inexperienced investor.
Note that this is a second, independent twelve-month test, and it attaches to the borrower rather than to the property. A first-time investor buying a cabin cannot qualify on short-term rental income regardless of what the appraisal supports. A seasoned owner refinancing a property they have held for eight months clears the borrower gate but still sits in variance territory on the property's history.
The credit floor for this program is a minimum FICO of 660 for all guarantors, with the middle score used. The program also will not accept a borrower with only one credit score or less than 24 months of credit history.
What else rides along with short-term rental income
These are not history rules, but they are the terms that apply the moment you qualify on short-term rental income, and they change the shape of the deal enough that they belong in the same decision.
- Maximum 60% LTV for all standard and cross-collateralized (blanket) transactions using short-term rental income to qualify.
- Minimum DSCR of 1.25x.
- Interest-only is permitted, and qualifies on ITIA.
- An additional 6 months of PITIA reserves is required for short-term rental. Against the base requirement of 3 months PITIA at a DSCR of 1.0 or higher, that is nine months in total.
- New York City short-term rentals are not permitted. All loans must be originated in accordance with federal, state and local regulations and restrictions pertaining to short-term rentals.
One note on the record: an older change-log entry dated 12/27/2022 referenced a short-term rental DSCR of 2.0. A later entry dated 10/16/2023 set the short-term rental requirement at 1.25x, and 1.25x is what the current V28 body text states. The newer figure governs.
The short-term lease that is not a short-term rental
There is a category the program treats separately, and it carries the most useful exception on this page.
Read that carefully. A property on a six-month or nine-month lease — a traveling-nurse rental, a corporate placement, a seasonal tenancy under a real lease — that is not listed on any short-term rental platform takes the same 60% LTV limit, but does not carry the twelve-month rental history requirement.
The listing status is the dividing line. Not furnishing, not lease length, not nightly versus monthly billing. Whether the unit appears on a short-term rental website.
The program added this differentiation between short-term rentals and short-term leases deliberately, in a 12/27/2022 change-log entry. If your property genuinely runs on leases rather than nightly bookings, confirm it is not still sitting live on a platform — the listing alone can pull the file into short-term rental treatment.
Two to four units
On a 2-4 unit property, the property is deemed a short-term rental if 50% or more of the units are being used as short-term rentals.
That threshold has a hard consequence. A duplex with one nightly-rental unit and one annual lease is at 50%, meets the test, and the whole property is treated as a short-term rental — 60% LTV, DSCR of 1.25x, the additional reserves, and the history requirement. A triplex with one short-term unit out of three is not.
Assembling the file
For a refinance where you intend to qualify on short-term rental income, the documentation work is front-loaded. In rough order:
1. Confirm the borrower clears the experienced-investor definition. If not, short-term rental income is off the table and there is no point optimizing the rest.
2. Count the trailing twelve months from today, not from the last twelve months you had bookings. Identify every zero month inside that window before you submit, and compute your own average with the zeros included.
3. Pull the per-property statement, not the account summary. Confirm it names the subject property or unit and shows rents collected month by month for the previous twelve months.
4. If you are using bank statements instead, assemble the supporting rental records alongside them, so each month's deposits tie to the subject property.
5. Verify reserves against nine months of PITIA, not three.
6. If you are between six and eleven months, decide before you spend appraisal money whether you are requesting a variance or waiting for the twelfth month.
The order matters because steps 1 and 2 are free and steps 3 through 6 are not. Most short-term rental files that fail late failed at step 1 or step 2, and the borrower could have known on day one.
What this page does not do
This page is not an approval, a quote, a rate sheet, or a commitment to lend. Nothing here is a pre-qualification, and no figure on this page is an offer of terms.
It does not tell you what income figure a variance would produce on a six-to-eleven-month file. That is discretionary by design and the program does not define it.
It does not cover the income haircut and market-rent cap arithmetic, which the linked sibling post covers.
It does not address whether your short-term rental is legally permitted to operate where it sits. Zoning, licensing, registration, HOA restrictions and municipal ordinance are questions for your attorney and your municipality, not for us, and an approval is not a compliance opinion.
It does not address the tax treatment of short-term rental income. Ask your accountant.
And it does not cover the rest of the file — appraisal, title, insurance, entity documentation, prepayment structure, or pricing. Those are separate decisions with their own requirements, and a clean twelve months of statements does not carry them.
Guideline DSCR V28 · Reviewed August 31, 2026
Published September 1, 2026 · Updated September 1, 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.