Interesting point. When we refinanced our home I was "self-employed". The loan officer said that was always a big problem (even after I reminded her that I had been self-employed through my own corporation when we built the house and had not ever been late with a payment in more than two years - we pay extra principal every month. She said, "It has nothing to do with you, but we don't need your income anyway." So, the financing went through based exclusively on my wife's salary. The kicker is that the loan amount was better than 4 years gross income for her. The rule-of-thumb for my father's generation was you could only get financing for 2.5 years of your household income. That's a big change that I've seen plenty of anecdotal evidence for. We've some very young newly wed friends whose income (combined) is $40,000. They just closed on a $210,000 home. My guess is that a generation ago they'd have never gotten that amount from any lending institution.