Yes, though the lender uses its own version of your cash flow, and it rarely matches your bank account. For rentals with a full year on your tax return, the underwriter runs the analysis off Schedule E: net rental income, plus add-backs for depreciation, mortgage interest, taxes, insurance, HOA dues, and any one-time extraordinary expenses, minus each property's full payment. Some properties look like losers on paper because of heavy write-offs, but the paper items come back in the analysis, so a rental showing a tax loss can still calculate as a positive. From there the treatment is straightforward. Net positive cash flow adds to your qualifying income; net negative counts as a monthly debt against you. Four rentals that genuinely cash flow should help, but the figure that lands on your application is the tax-return-derived one, often lower than real-world cash flow because of the deductions you took. Two timing notes: - Newly acquired rentals without a full year on a return are documented from the lease and the appraiser's market-rent schedule, credited at 75% of the gross rent. - Short-term rental income gets treated more conservatively. Lenders generally want it documented on tax returns with a real history, and the exact history required varies by agency, the automated findings, and the situation. So the seasoned, reported rentals do the heavy lifting; the newest and the short-term ones count for less, or not yet at all.