Separate two roles that often get blended: being a borrower on the loan versus being on title as an owner. A borrower is on the loan and legally liable to repay it. Title makes you an owner of the property with no repayment obligation. We would never recommend putting someone with no qualifying income on the loan as a borrower, because they'd take on full liability without adding any strength to the file. For your wife, the clean move is usually title. Ownership carries no repayment obligation, so zero qualifying income doesn't matter there. A friend could technically be a co-borrower on the loan without going on title, which would make them legally obligated to repay while holding no ownership stake if things went sideways. We'd steer you away from that. We've seen parents do it for their kids and still advise caution, and between friends the risk sits almost entirely on the person signing the note. As a rule, anyone who is a borrower on the mortgage should generally also be on title, so their legal standing in the property matches the liability they're carrying. Whether a co-signer actually solves your qualifying-income problem depends on the specifics of both files. That's worth walking through with real numbers first, and the free Roadmap conversation, about 20 minutes, is exactly the place to do it.