Fontenot MortgageOdette Fontenot · Mortgage broker
(504) 555-0148

The loans

The maths

Odette

One person answers this. (504) 555-0148 · odette@fontenot-mortgage.example

Start a conversation

New Orleans, Louisiana · one broker

Your income is fine.
The paperwork is the problem.

I place mortgages for people whose money arrives in a hundred small pieces — contractors, owners, partners, players, anyone whose tax return is an argument rather than a payslip. Twelve months of deposits will usually tell the story better than two years of returns.

Work out what a lender sees Talk to me first

Odette Fontenot · Mortgage broker
(504) 555-0148

12 months

Deposits into one working business account

Total deposits
$179,500
Monthly average
$14,958
Less a 35% expense factor
−$5,235
Qualifying income
$9,723/mo

Illustrative figures. The high month is 69% above the low one — that swing is exactly what a W-2 lender cannot read and a statement programme can.

Put your own numbers in
A New Orleans street of balconied buildings with people walking — a stock photograph of the city this practice is set in.
Greater New Orleans, and nowhere else. Insurance, elevation and short-term-rental rules move a file here more than the interest rate does. That is a reason to know one market properly rather than eight badly.
01Why this is hard

A mortgage system built for payslips, and you do not have one.

Underwriting wants a number that repeats. Self-employment produces a number that argues. Both facts are reasonable and the collision between them is where most of these files die — usually at the point where somebody reads the bottom line of a tax return and stops.

  • Good tax planning is bad loan paperwork

    Every deduction you legitimately take reduces the income a lender is allowed to count. Nobody tells you that in March.

  • Two years that look nothing alike

    A declining year gets averaged down or used outright. A growing one often gets ignored. The window you choose matters as much as the numbers in it.

  • Being told no by somebody with one product

    A lender with one guideline book has exactly one answer available when your file does not fit it, and it is not a considered one.

02Six routes to the same front door

There is no single “self-employed mortgage”. There are several products with different rules, and the job is picking the one your file actually fits — then arguing for the terms inside it.

03How I read a year of your money

$9,723

the figure every other number is built on

Run it on your own deposits

  1. 01

    Add up twelve months of deposits

    Every credit into the business account, all pages, no editing. This is the raw number and it is usually larger than people expect.

  2. 02

    Take out what is not income

    Transfers between your own accounts, refunds, a loan, an insurance settlement, the truck you sold. None of it is earnings and all of it comes out.

  3. 03

    Apply your ownership share

    A forty percent partner counts forty percent. Evidence it with an operating agreement or a letter, not a sentence in an email.

  4. 04

    Subtract the expense factor

    The lender assumes your costs as a flat percentage. This is the single number most worth arguing about, and almost nobody argues about it.

  5. 05

    What is left is what you earn

    Every ratio, every price and every payment a lender talks about afterwards is built on this one figure.

04Who you would actually be dealing with
No photograph

Odette Fontenot

Mortgage broker · New Orleans, LA

There is no headshot on this site. Odette is invented for this demonstration, and a stock photograph of a real person presented as a named, licensed broker would be a lie about that person as much as about this practice. An engraved plate is the honest object to put here.

The particulars

A broker’s site normally puts a photograph and a pair of impressive numbers here — loans closed, years licensed. Those are the two things it is easiest to invent and hardest to check, so this demonstration shows neither. What follows is true of this site.

Practice size
OneNo team, no coordinator, no queue
Region
Eight parishesGreater New Orleans, and only that
Routes placed
SixStatements, P&L, depletion, DSCR, conventional, refinance
Reply window
Same dayUsually inside two hours on a weekday
Calculators here
EightFree, no email gate, nothing stored
Cost of the first conversation
NothingNo documents, no credit pull
The longer version
05Six files, and what turned each one

Illustrative scenarios, written to show how a file moves. Nobody said any of this and no client is depicted.

  • Folio 01A baker arranging fresh bread in a display case — a stock photograph illustrating the scenario, not a client.stock photograph · not a client

    Bakery owner, Bywater

    Two very different years, one steady average.

    The problem. Twenty-two months of ordinary trading and two months of a catering contract that will not repeat. On a twelve-month look-back the file was either far too good or nowhere near enough, depending on which twelve months you chose.

    The turn. Twenty-four months of statements flattened the spike into something a lender could believe. The expense factor was the real fight — an ownership letter and a note from the accountant moved it fifteen points.

    The expense factor is the negotiation. The rate is the thing people argue about instead.

    Look-back used
    24 months
    Expense factor moved by
    15 points
    Route
    Bank statement
    Bank statement, 24 months
  • Folio 02A craftsman cutting a wooden plank, photographed from above — a stock photograph illustrating the scenario.stock photograph · not a client

    Finish carpenter, Mid-City

    Told he was non-QM. He was not.

    The problem. Two clean years of returns, a truck on a five-year depreciation schedule and a home office deduction. Somebody had read the bottom line, seen a small number and stopped.

    The turn. Adding the depreciation back put him inside a conventional loan with three percent down. Cheaper rate, cheaper mortgage insurance, and the paperwork he already had in a drawer.

    Always add the returns up before deciding the returns do not work.

    Route first suggested
    Non-QM
    Route taken
    Conventional
    Add-back that mattered
    Depreciation
    Conventional, self-employed
  • Folio 03A trumpeter playing during a live performance under stage light — a stock photograph illustrating the scenario.stock photograph · not a client

    Working musician, Marigny

    Paid by nine different people every month.

    The problem. Club work, session fees, teaching, festival contracts and a licensing cheque that turns up twice a year. No business account at all — everything landed personally.

    The turn. A personal-account statement programme takes no expense factor at all, which suited someone whose costs are a van and a horn. The work was proving which deposits were earnings and which were a shared rent transfer.

    Personal statements: no expense factor, more explaining. Business statements: less explaining, a factor to fight.

    Account type
    Personal
    Expense factor
    None applied
    Deposits reviewed
    12 months
    Bank statement, personal account
  • Folio 04A stylist working at a salon chair — a stock photograph illustrating the scenario.stock photograph · not a client

    Salon owner, Uptown

    The deposits looked wrong. The business was fine.

    The problem. Card settlements arriving in daily batches, tips run through a third-party app, and chair rent paid in by four stylists on four different days. Adding up the deposits produced a number nobody recognised.

    The turn. A signed twelve-month profit and loss statement told the story in one page. Two months of statements were still needed as a cross-check, and they had to agree — so we reconciled them before the lender did.

    If the P&L and the statements disagree, find out why on your own time.

    Route
    P&L, 12 months
    Cross-check
    2 months of deposits
    Prepared by
    Licensed third party
    Profit & loss, 12 months
  • Folio 05A food truck counter with the owner writing an order — a stock photograph illustrating the scenario.stock photograph · not a client

    Food truck owner, Gentilly

    The insurance quote, not the rate, decided it.

    The problem. A rental double where the rent comfortably covered the mortgage and then did not, once the insurance premium arrived. The coverage ratio fell under the programme minimum by a few dollars a month.

    The turn. Pricing insurance before anything else changed the order of the whole deal. A larger down payment brought the ratio back over the line, and an interest-only period was priced as an alternative so the choice was visible.

    On a Gulf South rental, quote the insurance first. Everything else is arithmetic around it.

    Route
    DSCR
    Binding number
    Insurance premium
    Fixes compared
    More down, or interest-only
    DSCR, rental double
  • Folio 06A creole townhouse balcony behind a crepe myrtle in bloom — a stock photograph used as illustration.stock photograph · not a client

    Sold a business, Old Metairie

    All the money, none of the income.

    The problem. A business sold in the spring, the proceeds sitting in a brokerage account, and no new venture started yet. Income on paper: almost nothing. Cash: substantial.

    The turn. A depletion programme divided the eligible balance into a monthly figure. The trap was double counting — money spent on the down payment cannot also be counted as income, and one lender’s divisor was twice another’s.

    Ask what the divisor is before you ask what the rate is.

    Route
    Asset depletion
    Divisors compared
    60 vs 120 months
    Employment income
    None required
    Asset depletion

All six in full

06Work it out yourself first

Eight calculators, each on its own page, each shareable as a link that carries your figures. No email gate, no lead capture, nothing stored.

07What this site will not invent

The licence line, left blank on purpose

Broker
Fontenot Mortgage — Odette Fontenot
NMLS ID
  not issued — this practice is fictional
State licence
  not issued
Consumer Access
no registry entry exists to link to
Registered office
none published — see below

A real broker earns your trust partly with a number you can look up. Inventing one in the format the registry actually issues would put a working professional’s identifier on a business that does not exist, so this demonstration prints the blank instead. For the same reason there is no street address, no coordinates in the structured data and no map on this site — each of those would point at somewhere real. The full disclosure note.

Where I work, in words

No map is embedded and no address is published. A map would need a real place to point at, and this practice does not have one. So the coverage area is written down instead.

  • Orleans Parish
  • Jefferson Parish
  • St. Tammany Parish
  • St. Bernard Parish
  • St. Charles Parish
  • Plaquemines Parish
  • Tangipahoa Parish
  • Lafourche Parish

Neighbourhoods that come up most: Bywater · Mid-City · Algiers Point · Gentilly · Broadmoor · Marigny · Uptown · Lakeview · Old Metairie · Covington.

The next step

One person reads this. That person is me.

Tell me roughly how you get paid and what you are trying to buy. No documents, no application, no credit pull to have the first conversation.

Start a conversation (504) 555-0148

Weekday replies inside two hours. This is a demonstration site — nothing you send here is transmitted or stored.

  • Text, if that suits you better(504) 555-0149
  • Weekdays 8am–6pm CT, and most Saturday morningsAnd most Saturday mornings
  • Greater New OrleansOrleans Parish · Jefferson Parish · St. Tammany Parish · St. Bernard Parish
  • Eight calculators, free to useNo email required to see a number