Yes, a co-signed loan counts against your DTI by default, because you are legally obligated on it. Whether removing your name is worth the trouble depends on whether DTI is actually your constraint. The exception that gets most co-signers out of it: if the other borrower has made all of the payments for the last twelve consecutive months from an account you are not on, documented with canceled checks or bank statements and no late payments, the debt can be excluded from your ratios. Your name stays on the loan and the account stays on your credit; the payment just comes out of the DTI math. On the refinance question, run the honest test first. If you have strong income, little other debt, and a healthy down payment, a small remaining balance is probably not what is holding back your approval, and refinancing it into the other person's name will not meaningfully change your rate or your qualifying amount. In that case, skip the contortions. If your ratios are genuinely tight, the twelve-month documentation route usually gets you the same exclusion with far less hassle than a refinance. The way to know which situation you are in is to run your real numbers, which is exactly what the free Roadmap conversation is for, about 20 minutes.