If you are self-employed and buying in Troon North, your qualifying income gets rebuilt downward from two years of tax returns, and then a jumbo payment, an HOA and any mandatory club obligation all get stacked on top of it. That squeeze from both ends is why strong Troon North buyers routinely get approvals well below what they expected.
It is a solvable problem, but only if you solve it before you write an offer. Here is the whole calculation.
How an underwriter rebuilds your income
Not from revenue, not from your P&L. From two years of filed returns, using Fannie Mae Form 1084 or Freddie Mac Form 91.
Sole proprietor, Schedule C. Net profit line 31. Add back depreciation, depletion and business use of home. Subtract non-recurring income you cannot document as continuing. Divide by 24, or by months in business if shorter.
S corporation, 1120S plus K-1. Your W-2 wage counts. K-1 ordinary business income counts only if distributions are documented and the business has liquidity to keep making them. Notes and obligations payable within a year get subtracted unless you evidence they roll or are covered.
Partnership, 1065 plus K-1. Same structure, guaranteed payments included.
Schedule E. Rental net plus depreciation, amortization, taxes, insurance, interest and HOA where allowed, minus full PITIA.
Three rules that outweigh the arithmetic:
- A write-off is a trade. Each dollar of aggressive deduction saves tax at your marginal rate and costs roughly four to five dollars of buying power. Make that trade deliberately, not by accident in the two years before you buy in a jumbo neighborhood.
- Declining income becomes the baseline. Year two lower than year one usually means year two is your qualifying income. Averaging is for rising income.
- A K-1 without distributions is paper. Retained earnings are not spendable income, and underwriting frequently agrees.
Troon North itself, and why it matters to your loan
Troon North is an 1,800 acre master-planned community in the Sonoran Desert, north Scottsdale, laid out in the shadow of Pinnacle Peak.
The golf. Two courses, both designed by Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish. The Monument opened in 1990, built around the granite outcropping it is named for. The Pinnacle followed in 1995, running through steeper canyon terrain with forced carries and hidden greens. Weiskopf led a major renovation in 2007 that also reconfigured the routing across both 36 holes.
One distinction that costs people money. Troon North Golf Club and the private Troon Country Club are different entities with different membership structures. Buyers conflate them constantly, then discover at underwriting that the obligation they assumed was optional is not, or that the one they budgeted for is at the other club. Confirm in writing which club, if any, attaches to your specific address.
What the community does to your qualifying number
You are almost certainly in jumbo territory. Above the conforming loan limit the standard changes: reserves held in verifiable assets after closing, tighter debt-to-income tolerances, full documentation, and often a second appraisal or desk review. For a self-employed borrower the reserve requirement is the sharp edge, because money sitting in a business operating account does not automatically count as yours, and moving it out has tax consequences your CPA should see first. See Jumbo Loans in Scottsdale.
The obligation stack is layered. A community association, potentially a sub-association depending on which enclave you buy in, and separately any club obligation. Ask specifically how many associations bill the address, because buyers routinely quote one number and meet the second at underwriting. See HOA Dues, Club Dues and Assessments.
The club question decides your ratio. If membership is mandatory at your address, the dues and minimums are counted against your debt-to-income like a car payment. An initiation deposit, refundable or not, is cash out of your accounts and generally does not count toward your reserve requirement. That combination, dues in the ratio and deposit out of reserves, is the most common way a Troon North file comes back smaller than expected. Full mechanics in How a Scottsdale Golf Club Membership Affects Your Mortgage Approval.
Appraisals here reward specificity. Custom homes on large desert lots against the boulder formations are not interchangeable with production product. In a submarket where few directly comparable homes sell in a year, an appraiser reaches further in distance and further back in time, and adjustments grow. On a jumbo file that is real timeline risk, so order the appraisal early. Well and septic appear in parts of far north Scottsdale and carry their own inspections on some programs.
Current Troon North market
I publish live numbers for this community, pulled from the source and dated, rather than a range I remembered. If the figures below are not showing, they are being refreshed.
Ask me for the current subdivision report before you write an offer. What a home sold for last month decides your appraisal risk more than any national headline does.
The structures that work when the returns do not
If your returns support the house, take the conventional jumbo. It is almost always the cheapest money available. What follows is for the file where they do not, and none of it is a shortcut around qualifying. Each proves repayment capacity a different way, and each prices differently than agency financing because the risk profile differs.
Bank statement. Twelve or twenty four months of business or personal statements, income derived from deposits with an expense factor applied. Fits a business with strong consistent deposit flow and a return showing little after deductions. Does not fit lumpy revenue or heavy transfers between accounts, because transfers are stripped from the deposit calculation and the number collapses.
Asset depletion or asset utilization. Qualifying income calculated from verified liquid assets over a defined period instead of from earnings. The natural fit for a Troon North buyer with substantial documented liquidity and modest reportable income. Retirement accounts are typically discounted; pledged assets generally excluded.
No-ratio. No debt-to-income calculation at all. The file rests on credit, assets, reserves and the property. This is the structure for the borrower whose finances are genuinely complex and whose reportable income does not describe their actual position.
Before you write an offer in Troon North
Twelve months out, if you have the runway:
- Get your CPA and your lender in the same conversation. The two years of returns that will qualify you are being written now.
- Pull your own credit and read every line. Correcting an inaccurate item through the bureau dispute process takes weeks you will not have under contract.
- Stop moving money between accounts without a paper trail. Every large deposit gets sourced.
- Decide what your reserves actually are, and whether they sit somewhere an underwriter can count.
Sixty days out:
- Ask in writing whether club membership is mandatory at the specific address and whether any obligation transfers with the property.
- Get the current membership plan and the association budget, reserve study and any approved assessment.
- Get fully underwritten, not pre-qualified. A pre-qualification is a calculator. An underwritten pre-approval means a human read your returns and K-1s, which is what makes a listing agent take a self-employed offer seriously at this price point.
- Choose your structure before you shop, so you know your real number rather than a rate sheet estimate.
Why bring this file to us
- We read the returns ourselves. Schedule C, 1120S, K-1, Schedule E, add-backs and all, before you go looking at houses.
- We ask about the club on the first call. Most lenders discover it in underwriting, which is the difference between a structure chosen deliberately and a file repriced late.
- Broker model. Multiple investors rather than one bank's shelf, which is exactly what a jumbo self-employed file needs when the first answer is no.
- The full toolkit, agency jumbo through bank statement, asset depletion and no-ratio non-QM, chosen on the file rather than on inventory.
- You talk to the principal. Ricky Khamis is President of EPiQ Lending, NMLS #173141, lending in Arizona since 1999 and a 2025 Presidents Club Winner at CMG Home Loans. Direct line: (480) 999-9842.
EPiQ Lending is NMLS #1936984, at 7975 N. Hayden Road, Suite A-101 in Scottsdale. Verify all of it before you trust any of it: Ricky's EPiQ Lending profile, the Scottsdale branch, and the license itself at NMLS Consumer Access. Hold every lender to that standard, including us.
Send me two years of returns, your most recent K-1 and the club's membership plan before you write in Troon North, and I will tell you what you actually qualify for and on which structure.
Equal Housing Opportunity. This is general information, not a commitment to lend or an offer to extend credit. Club membership structures, dues and association obligations vary and change over time; confirm current terms directly with the club and the association. Rates, terms, and program guidelines change and depend on credit approval, property appraisal, and other qualifying factors. Not all applicants will qualify. Non-QM and no-ratio financing carries different pricing and terms than agency financing. Consult your tax advisor regarding the tax consequences of any deduction or distribution strategy.
Looking at a specific home? Send me the address and I will run the numbers: rickykhamis.com/analyze
