Tips for the travel nurse buying a house:
To your healthcare colleagues, you are paid! They are ready for you to foot the bill at lunch. Your friends and family know you started this journey with the intention of making more than you did as staff. You yourself know you are doing awesome (or at least better!) financially. Buuuut your lender? They see that taxable income, and they think you are doing awful. “You only made WHAT last year? And you’re a nurse..? Do you only work for 13 weeks at a time?? And you want to be approved for HOW much?” This is very common for a travel nurse buying a house or trying to buy a house.
At this point, your bank or lender thinks you’re crazy and almost immediately denies you. But can you blame them, though? Think of how many times you had to read your own contract and pay to break it down to really understand it or how scary (but somewhat exciting) to know at the end of 13 weeks. You may be in a totally new state and facility or not working at all. With time and experience, we began to see how advantageous tax-free earnings are and that we are constantly being offered extensions or bombarded with new opportunities! And your lender can too.
House buying process
Whether looking to buy a new house and keep traveling, adding to your portfolio, or found a place in your travels you are ready to call home, you may at some point experience this travel nurse nightmare. Having to prove your worthiness beyond your credit score and nominal tax return and prove the reliability and permanency of your employment can be frustrating and time-consuming, especially when doing it remotely while traveling!
I’ve been a traveler for 2.5 years, and after 1 year, I decided I wanted to utilize a home equity line of credit for some repairs on my permanent residence. I had doubled my income that year and the house was paid off, so I thought it would be a simple process. But simply turned into 5 months of frustration, demands, negotiations, and denials. After months of trying to prove myself, I realized I never really explained myself. How we work as travelers is complex and can be confusing! In my research, I found that a pro tip when trying to get a mortgage or loan is to include a letter with your offer. So I wrote a very, very detailed letter of explanation. The next day, I was approved!! My underwriter told me they were honestly just confused and didn’t understand travel nursing.
Research
I did some research to see if other travelers were ever in this situation. I found an old forum from 2011 on a real estate website, where multiple nurses stated they were denied mortgages and had to change their plans based on the same issues and confusion I faced. I commented to see if travelers were still struggling with this, and even though the original post was from 2011, I immediately got a lot of responses. Travelers who were struggling similarly and even real estate agents whose clients were traveling professionals being denied loans reached out to ask what I incorporated in the explanation letter. I even connected with a nurse who went to staff to try and prove her employment reliability and still got denied by 6 lenders until she submitted an explanation letter! The work we do is awesome, and we deserve as much recognition and credibility as anyone else.
In a concise but detailed page or less, the key points to explain are:
1- The “contract”
No bank or anyone removed from healthcare is going to understand this. They see 13-week employment and see temporary, not consistent income. We see the opportunity to make bank on a beach in Cali or in a cabin in the Midwest, but your lender does not. Explain the concept of extensions and how often nurses stay in one place for up to a year if they choose or how we proactively secure the next contract before our current contract is up. Discuss the nursing shortage in your specialty and how there are jobs in every state. At the end of your 13-week “contract,” you will be employed somewhere! Reinforce that you keep your license in your state where you keep your IRS-mandated permanent residence so if you ever wanted to return home to permanent staff, you easily could without lapse in employment.
No bank is going to understand this
No bank or anyone removed from healthcare is going to understand this. They see 13-week employment and see temporary, not consistent income. We see the opportunity to make bank on a beach in Cali or in a cabin in the Midwest, but your lender does not. Explain the concept of extensions and how often nurses stay in one place for up to a year if they choose or how we proactively secure the next contract before our current contract is up. Discuss the nursing shortage in your specialty and how there are jobs in every state. At the end of your 13-week “contract,” you will be employed somewhere! Reinforce that you keep your license in your state where you keep your IRS-mandated permanent residence so if you ever wanted to return home to permanent staff, you easily could without lapse in employment.
2- The income
We know our tax returns do not directly reflect the actual amount of money we make a year. Explain to your prospective lender the stipend and the GSA, and be prepared to provide pay stubs or forms of proof. Explain that there are sign-on bonuses, extension bonuses, travel reimbursement, overtime rates, increased pay in certain destinations, strike contracts, guaranteed hours, etc. Highlight every possible way you have made money and found travel nursing lucrative!
3- Briefly explain nursing
As part of your introduction, highlight what you do, your specialty, and how your schedule works. Lenders like 9-5, 5-day-a-week employee applicants because they know and identify with these applicants and view their employment as secure. Be as detailed as you want with this part. I included I worked in psych, and my lender viewed this as favorable due to her own personal experience.
The house-buying process as a travel nurse can be hard. We hope with these tips. The process will be a little easier.
