With only a few months in a contractor role, income continuity is a real obstacle, and hiding the contractor status rarely survives underwriting. Lenders qualify you on stable, continuing income, and they verify it thoroughly. Even if your pay stubs show 40 hours a week with nothing labeling you a contractor, the verification of employment or other documentation usually surfaces the truth somewhere in the file. The issue is continuity. With regular W-2 employment, a lender can reasonably expect the income to keep coming. With contract work there is no assurance the assignment extends past its term, so lenders want a track record before counting the income: about a two-year history in the same line of work is the standard. A shorter history can occasionally work with documented prior experience in the same field, but two years is the safer path, and a few months in gives a lender neither. If the contractor status surfaces during underwriting, the likely outcome is a denial rather than a counteroffer at a higher rate or bigger down payment, because there is no continuing income to price around. True no-income-documentation loans do exist, but they are non-QM portfolio products with no agency guideline behind them: each investor sets its own terms, the down payment requirements are substantial and vary widely by investor, and the cost makes them a poor fix for most buyers. The practical move is to build history in the role, or time the purchase for when your track record lets a lender count the income. To see how your specific timeline pencils, bring it to a free Roadmap conversation, about 20 minutes where we run your real numbers.