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Comment by mbreedlove | Hacker News Reader

part time nursing student

I'm not even sure that is the correct term. If she was truly a nurse (student or otherwise) working part time, she would have pay stubs from her employer. The fact that she had to rely on bank statements and client letters tells me she is perhaps working for cash.

"works part time providing home care for children and the elderly" is this a veiled way of saying she is a babysitter? If she was actually doing nursing care for children or the elderly, I assume she would be working for a company, back again to the fact that she doesn't have a pay stub, I think she is working for cash under the table.

Of course she is off book. She probably provides services equivalent to an CNA, with perhaps some errands or other casual assistance work tied in.

There's a big market for this sort of thing. Agency-based homecare is really expensive and usually pretty awful. Traditionally, these sorts of casual labor jobs had to be paired with a spouse's income to avoid IRS scrutiny, but IRS enforcement isn't what it once was due to years of funding neglect.

The notion that a bank is recognizing off-book income as income for lending purposes is incredible. Eventually the prospective lender will run into a problem, and usually will take an income hit when they are forced to land a normal job. The other turd about the "part time student" aspect is that she is probably living on student loans.

Or... she could be a contractor to one of those companies, to help them when they have more work than employees can handle.

In that case she would have a paystub..... or at least a contractor agreement.

I realize that real estate in California is priced high, but there is limited chance that a 610k mortgage with a 6% mortgage rate has a payment that is 25% or even 30% of the income of a full time nurse in california.

Doing the math, it's $3657/mo before taxes; where the average salary of a nurse in LA is $90k/year.

But a nursing student is not a nurse; you don't start making the nurse salary [1] until graduating and then probably some time on the job. And, on top of that, being a student, you probably work reduced hours at your normal job and are accumulating more debt on top of the mortgage.

[1] Memorable reddit comment about the difference between "nursing student" and "nurse"; it's about the UK, but the same points apply. https://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/2kbxs2/stude...

And it's an arm, even if her future income is that of an average nurse in the geography, if in 6 years interest rates increase the monthly payment will quickly approach 60% of her salary.

I feel like this point should be much higher than it is, and should be highlighted more clearly in the article. And the article doesn't even make it clear if this is a 5/1 or a 5/5, but it also absolutely leaves out the point that the rate won't just change after the initial 5 year period.

Non-conforming and no-doc loans weren't the only problem in the 2007s. ARMs were a big issue too because everyone thought they could refi before the initial period was up and that ended up not being true.

I bet she's counting on being a W2 employee in 5 years after finishing nursing school and refinancing into a fixed-rate. Not a terrible gamble, especially with her likely LTV of 66%.

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