He said income wasn't the problem, the lack of W2 income was. This is the outcome when the decision tree is a strict set of forms and boxes to check. It lessons the likelihood of rogue employees pushing through bad loans, but also increases the likelihood of not making some loans that would be good.
Exactly, it was the automatic Desktop Underwriting process that rejected this, not a human.
He wrote that the loan officer would review his freelance income after 12-18 months. He's clearly at the wrong bank if it won't consider the income coming in on 4 properties owned free and clear.
Like I said, the whole article didn't pass my "smell test".