Bank Statement / No-Doc in Atlanta

It's growing, and the county filings back it up. New business applications in Fulton County ran 49,873 in 2025, up 5.3% year over year and 48.1% above 2019. Fulton County also counted 136,717 nonemployer businesses in 2023, up 11.9% from 2019, generating $7.8 billion in receipts. A nonemployer business has no paid staff and is usually run by one self-employed owner, so treat that count as a proxy for the self-employment trend, not a literal headcount. It lines up with the tax data: roughly three in ten Fulton County tax returns report business or professional income, against about two in ten nationally, for tax year 2022. If your last two years of returns don't reflect what your bank account actually shows, that gap is common in this market, not unusual, and it is exactly what this program is built to read past.

Yes, and the line item is intangible recording tax. Georgia charges $1.50 per $500 of the face amount of the note under O.C.G.A. section 48-6-61, about 0.30% of the loan, capped at $25,000 per note and due within 90 days of execution. Legally the note holder owes it; in practice the borrower pays it at closing. Short-term notes are exempt, and HB 586 raised that threshold from 36 months to 62 months effective July 1, 2025, so a bridge-length bank statement note can land outside it while a 30-year one does not. On a $400,000 loan that is roughly $1,200 of difference. Treat the exemption as something your closing attorney confirms on your specific note rather than a savings we quote you. Budget the separate transfer tax too: $1.00 per $1,000 of price under O.C.G.A. section 48-6-1, about $400 on a $400,000 purchase, customarily paid by the seller under the Georgia REALTORS form but negotiable. One more reason to get it right: unpaid intangibles tax bars foreclosure or exercise of the power of sale until the tax, interest and a 50% penalty are paid.

Yes, because the tax bill sits in the payment whether or not it sits in your paperwork, and the seller's bill is the wrong number. Georgia assesses at 40% of fair market value statewide, so your effective rate is the millage times 0.40, and the county general fund is only part of it. Fulton County held its general-fund levy at 8.87 mills for 2025, the fourth year running, but school district and municipal levies are separate and usually the larger share. The trap is the reassessment. Georgia's HB 581 floating homestead exemption, effective January 1, 2025, caps annual growth in a homestead's taxable value at CPI, but it never applied to non-homesteaded investment property, and Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, DeKalb, their school districts and the City of Atlanta all opted out by the March 1, 2025 deadline. Your property gets reassessed to market with no inflation cap. Underwrite the post-purchase assessed value, not the seller's historic bill, and pull the county's own estimate on the parcel. Your CPA is the right person for how it lands on your return.

A real quote on the parcel, and a higher one than you used two years ago. Georgia homeowners premiums rose 8.6% in 2025 against a 5.6% national average and are up roughly 39.7% cumulatively since 2021, with about another 10% projected for 2026. Metro Atlanta runs above the state, around $3,420 a year versus a Georgia average near $2,050, though those two figures come from different methodologies so treat the gap as directional rather than a clean comparison. The drivers are Hurricane Helene losses in areas not previously priced as high risk, hail and wind claim frequency, replacement-cost inflation, and roof-age underwriting rules. Roof age is the one that bites: an unreplaced 20-year roof can move both your premium and your eventual buyer's, so price the roof into the deal, not just into the rehab scope.

Usually not, because the city ordinance is built around a primary residence. The City of Atlanta requires a Short-Term Rental License under ordinance 20-O-1656, adopted March 15, 2021 and effective March 1, 2022, which authorizes licensing of a host's primary residence, and a single license may cover that residence plus one additional dwelling unit. That is a two-property ceiling and it is tied to where you live, so a non-owner-occupied pure-investment short-term rental is not licensable under the primary ordinance. Reported terms: a $150 annual license fee, $500 per adjudicated violation with each day a separate offense, three violations in 12 months revoking the license and barring reapplication on that property for a year, plus an 8% hotel-motel tax on stays of 30 days or fewer and 4% state sales tax. Verify those figures with the city before you model them. The suburbs are not uniform either. South Fulton charges a $200 application fee, Sandy Springs requires a business license plus a permit and has sued non-compliant operators, and Roswell requires registration and annual fire-marshal inspections. Underwrite the long-term rent and let short-term income be upside you confirm with counsel.

Often, and the test is whether flat rent still carries the property. Supply, not demand, is the constraint in this metro right now. Metro Atlanta multifamily ran 6.4% vacancy with $1,600 average asking rent and 0.4% rent growth in the first quarter of 2026, against 17.1K units still under construction, and single-family rents in Atlanta fell 0.2% year over year in the first half of 2026. Underwrite flat rent, not trend rent, and be sceptical of a pro forma that needs a bump. If the stressed rent covers the payment and the carry, a DSCR loan is usually the cleaner file. If it doesn't, bank statements can do the qualifying. Either way we originate it and a lending partner funds it, so your application finishes on the partner's portal while we stay on the file, and pricing, documentation and final terms are set in underwriting rather than quoted up front. Send us the address and the scenario and we'll tell you which one fits. You can start an application or talk to us first.

640 and up. This is a documented-cash-flow program rather than an asset-only one, so credit carries real weight in the file. What it does not require is tax returns or W-2s: we read bank statements instead, which is the point in a metro whose core county, Fulton, saw roughly three in ten tax returns report business or professional income for tax year 2022. No hard credit pull to start. Subject to underwriting.

From 20%. The exact number moves with your deposit history and the property. For a self-employed Atlanta buyer, the thing that usually decides the file is not the down payment but how clean the deposits are: consistent business deposits into one account read far better than the same money spread across four. Subject to underwriting.

$100K, up to $3M, so a median-priced metro Atlanta house sits well inside the range, on either a short-term or a 30-year structure. Investment and business-purpose only. If you are self-employed and buying a home to live in, this is not the program, and we will say so rather than run you through underwriting first. Subject to underwriting.