Financing a duplex
Can I get a rental loan on a duplex?
A duplex sits inside the same 1-4 unit residential box as a single-family home for every lender in this directory — the difference shows up in the appraisal form and the rent calculation, not in who is willing to lend.
- DSCR rental loan A duplex is still a 1-4 unit residential property, so it qualifies under the same DSCR framework as a single-family home — the calculation just aggregates two rent lines instead of one.
- Multi-family / commercial financing A duplex is two units, not five — treating it as a commercial multi-family deal invites underwriting on the wrong form and pricing structure entirely.
Lenders in the directory
No lender here publishes a rule for this
This is an underwriting judgment, not a published threshold. None of the 37 lenders in the directory states a policy on it, so there is no honest way to build a shortlist — and a list computed only from which products a lender writes would tell you nothing you could act on.
What matters here is how the file is presented rather than which lender receives it. The sections below cover that. When you are ready to approach lenders, the directory shows what each one does publish, with the date it was verified.
The appraisal changes even though the lender list does not
A single-family rental is appraised on Form 1004. A duplex, triplex or fourplex moves to Form 1025, the small residential income property appraisal, which requires the appraiser to estimate market rent for each unit separately and reconcile them against comparable small multi-unit sales rather than comparable single-family sales. Comparable 2-4 unit sales are thinner in most markets than single-family comps, which is the practical reason a duplex appraisal sometimes takes longer or comes back with a wider value range than a single-family one on the same block.
How DSCR is calculated on two units
Gross monthly rent for the DSCR calculation is the sum of both units’ rent — the owner-occupied-unit carve-outs that apply to house-hacking scenarios do not apply here, since this page assumes a straight non-owner-occupied investment purchase. If one unit is vacant, the appraiser’s market-rent estimate stands in for that unit’s rent the same way it would for a vacant single-family property.
Owner-occupied duplex financing is a different animal
A duplex where the buyer will live in one unit and rent the other is usually financed as an owner-occupied purchase through a completely different channel than anything in this directory — these lenders write non-owner-occupied investment loans. If that is the plan, the relevant path is a conventional or FHA owner-occupied loan, not the DSCR or hard-money products covered here.
What to have ready
- Per-unit rent figures or comparable market rents
- Confirmation the purchase is non-owner-occupied
- Insurance quote reflecting a two-unit dwelling
Questions
Does a duplex qualify for the same DSCR loans as a single-family rental?
What if I plan to live in one unit?
Is the DSCR calculated per unit or for the whole property?
Terms used on this page
- Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR) — DSCR is a property’s gross monthly rent divided by its total monthly mortgage payment. A DSCR of 1.00 means the rent exactly covers the payment; 1.25 means rent exceeds the payment by 25%.
- Form 1025 (Small Residential Income Property Appraisal Report) — Form 1025 is the standard appraisal report used for two-to-four unit residential properties. Unlike the one-unit report, it includes an income approach and a unit-by-unit rent analysis, since these properties are typically rented.
- Comparable Rent Schedule — A comparable rent schedule is the appraisal method of estimating a property’s market rent by identifying similar rented properties nearby, adjusting their rents for differences, and reconciling them into a single opinion. On one-unit properties this method is formalized as Form 1007; on two-to-four unit properties it is built into Form 1025.