Checkr's Felicia Lee on the mistake she made as a homebuyer, and what brokers can tell clients
As more borrowers bring more non-traditional income sources to a mortgage originator, one of the challenges is making sure that income can be confirmed quickly and accurately.
Every one of those sources has to be verified before a loan can close, and each one raises its own questions about how much of it a lender can count.
For brokers, that means the first conversation with a client increasingly has to cover everything the borrower earns, not just the paycheck. A borrower who leaves something out can end up with fewer options, something that one executive found out firsthand.
Felicia Lee (pictured top), head of solutions and customer success at Checkr, said self-employment and side income are a growing part of what borrowers use to qualify. She also made a mistake with her own income when she bought a home about two years ago.
"I was like, ‘I'm going to show what's needed, hide the rest of it,’" Lee told Mortgage Professional America. "And I'm like, ‘Hide it from who?’"
The changing borrower
When Lee bought her home, she said, she offered only what she thought was needed to qualify and held back the rest. The lender kept coming back for more documents and more information.
"That actually was not the right mentality going into it," Lee said. "You want to show all sustainable and stable income, whether it's from your core job or even your side hustle, or even your bank accounts.”
That back and forth is one of the biggest friction points for borrowers, she said.
"How awesome would it be if I tell you all my employment, what will be needed to qualify, you get it on the first shot, and we don't have to worry about the closing date?" Lee said.
The classic W-2 borrower is changing, Lee said, as more households rely on more than one source of income. Affordability is a big reason.
"People have to have two or three different types of jobs to be able to afford their mortgage," Lee said.
Self-employment accounts for about 10% of income, she said, which sounds small until you consider that for many borrowers it comes on top of a W-2. That raises questions on the lender's side.
"It’s like, ‘How am I calculating this?’” Lee said. “‘How do I know what to do here? And then how do I supplement that with their W-2 income?’"
Income has also become less steady. Truework, a Checkr company, found in its 2026 affordability report that the share of mortgage applicants with downside income instability rose from 50% in early 2022 to 62% by mid-2025, and that the severity of those swings nearly tripled.
"What does that mean about both your income stability and volatility, which has also been on the rise over the last couple of years?" Lee said.
Verifying all of that can differ from lender to lender, which matters for brokers shopping a file on a borrower's behalf. It has to happen quickly too because competition is tight for both the offer on the house and the loan.
A situation that originators are facing more often is a borrower with a salaried job and a side business, she said.
"The person in front of you might say, ‘Hey, I have this W-2 salary job, but I also have a side hustle on Etsy,’" Lee said. "And so, how can you verify that so that if I'm on the edge, I can use all of my qualifying income to be able to qualify for that loan?"
Calling ‘Sally’s Nail Salon’
Many businesses still verify income and employment by phone, Lee said. Checkr checks those businesses against databases to confirm they are real, she said, and it does not accept siblings or family members as verifiers.
The work gets harder at scale, she said, because the volume of verifications coming in is so large.
“We’re pinpointing Sally’s Nail Salon in Irvine, California versus Wayne, New Jersey,” Lee said. “And who is the right person to call? What point in time do they pick up the phone? What coast are they on? What’s an appropriate business hour?”
That matching is meant to keep fraud out of the process, she said.
“You think it’s just a manual verification, but there’s a lot that goes on to ensure that no fraud, no funny business is happening,” Lee said.
Checkr acquired income verification company Truework about a year and a half ago and is rolling out a suite for self-employment income. Lee said the goal is to cover every type of income and employment in one place.
Since then, Checkr has bought consumer-permission data platform Truv and announced a partnership with payroll provider Workday, Lee said. She said the company supports 140,000 customers in the US through its background screening business.
Over the next 12 to 18 months, Checkr is focused on reintroducing itself under the Checkr name and getting Truv’s products to work within the Truework platform, she said. Products that count rental and side-hustle income are also on the way, in part to help bring down the age of the typical first-time buyer.
"Home access shouldn't be guarded to only a few," Lee said. "We should open that up.”
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