The Mortgage File: A Reference to the Documents and What Each One Proves
A mortgage file runs to hundreds of pages across dozens of document types. This is a reference to the principal ones, organised by what each document is evidence of rather than alphabetically — because the useful question about any document in a loan file is what fact it establishes, and which other document would contradict it.
Each entry notes the value it carries into validation, since that is where most of them matter.
Application and underwriting
URLA — Form 1003 (Uniform Residential Loan Application) The borrower's stated position: income, employment, assets, liabilities, property and declarations. Almost every cross-document check in a loan file has one leg in the 1003, because it is the assertion every other document either supports or contradicts.
UUTS — Form 1008 (Uniform Underwriting and Transmittal Summary) The underwriter's summary of the loan as approved: qualifying income, ratios, loan terms, programme and any waivers. It records what the decision was based on, which makes it the document against which the rest of the file is reconciled.
Automated underwriting findings The AUS response, its recommendation, and the conditions it imposed. Its value in review is the condition list: each condition is a requirement that something else in the file must satisfy.
Income and employment
W-2 Annual wage and tax statement. Establishes prior-year employment income as reported to the IRS.
Paystub Current earnings, usually with year-to-date figures. Year-to-date is the field that most often differs from the others, because it covers a partial period that is still moving while a W-2 or a 1040 covers a closed one. A difference here is expected; what has to be checked is whether the difference is explained by the periods, or by something else.
Form 1040 and schedules Filed personal tax return. For self-employed borrowers the schedules — C, E, K-1 — carry the qualifying income rather than the summary page. [1]
VOE — Form 1005 (Verification of Employment) Direct confirmation from the employer of dates, position and compensation. Independent of borrower-supplied documents, which is precisely its value.
Form 4506-C (IVES Request for Transcript of Tax Return) Borrower authorisation for the lender to obtain tax transcripts directly from the IRS. Note that the form is the authorisation; the transcript it produces is the evidence. [3]
Bank statements In conventional files, supporting documentation. In bank-statement programmes, the primary income evidence — deposits are analysed over twelve or twenty-four months with an expense factor applied.
Assets
VOD — Form 1006 (Verification of Deposit) Direct confirmation from a depository of account balances and history.
Asset statements Account statements evidencing funds to close and reserves. Large deposits typically require sourcing, and the sourcing explanation is itself a document that has to agree with the rest of the file.
Credit and identity
Credit report Tradelines, balances, payment history and inquiries. Liabilities here are checked against those disclosed on the 1003; undisclosed debt is a recurring defect category.
SSA-89 Authorisation for the Social Security Administration to verify that a name, date of birth and Social Security number match its records.
Credit authorisation The borrower's consent to obtain credit, dated appropriately relative to the pull.
Property and collateral
Appraisal — Form 1004 (Uniform Residential Appraisal Report) Opinion of value for a single-family property, with comparables and the basis of adjustment. The value, effective date and property characteristics all feed downstream calculations.
Form 1073 (Individual Condominium Unit Appraisal Report) The condominium equivalent of the 1004.
Form 1007 (Single-Family Comparable Rent Schedule) Market rent for an investment property. In DSCR lending this is a qualifying input, and where it disagrees with an executed lease the discrepancy is material rather than clerical.
Condominium project questionnaire (Forms 1076 / 1077) Project-level eligibility: owner-occupancy, budget, reserves, litigation, commercial space. A loan can be perfect at borrower level and ineligible at project level.
Flood certification Whether the property sits in a Special Flood Hazard Area, determining whether flood insurance is required.
Hazard insurance declaration Coverage, deductible, effective dates and mortgagee clause. The coverage test is not simply "coverage amount versus loan amount" — guidelines generally look to replacement cost of the improvements, which can be legitimately lower than the loan amount on a high-land-value property, and programme and state requirements vary. Effective date, mortgagee clause and the property address remain checkable against the note and closing date, and a discrepancy there is material rather than clerical even when coverage itself is adequate.
Title commitment Vesting, liens, easements and requirements to be satisfied before insurable title passes.
Disclosure and compliance
Loan Estimate The TRID-required early disclosure of terms and costs. Its issue date relative to application is a timing requirement, not a formality.
Closing Disclosure [2] The final statement of terms and costs. Both the figures and the delivery timing relative to consummation are subject to requirements, and tolerance comparisons run between the LE and CD.
HUD-1 Settlement Statement The predecessor settlement statement, still used for transaction types outside TRID's scope.
Intent to Proceed acknowledgement Records the borrower's intent to proceed after receiving the Loan Estimate, and its date governs when certain fees may be collected.
HMDA data (Loan/Application Register fields) Data reported under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Reported values must be consistent with the file they were drawn from, and a mismatch is a reportable data-integrity issue rather than a credit defect.
Closing and legal
Promissory note The borrower's promise to repay: amount, rate, term and payment terms. The controlling statement of the obligation — where the note and any other document disagree on terms, the note is the one that matters.
Deed of trust or mortgage The security instrument granting the lien. Which instrument is used, and the notice provisions inside it, follow state law.
Borrower certifications and affidavits Occupancy intent, and other borrower attestations that carry conditions into the loan.
How to use this list in review
Three observations that matter more than any individual definition.
Most documents are corroborating, not primary. Income appears on a W-2, a paystub, the 1003, a 1040 and a VOE. Only one qualifying figure can be correct. The defect is rarely inside any one of those documents.
Dates are as material as amounts. Disclosure timing, credit pull dates, appraisal effective dates and insurance effective dates all carry requirements. A file with correct figures and wrong sequencing is still defective.
Absence is a finding. A document that should be present given the loan's programme and characteristics, and is not, is a defect that no amount of examining the documents that are present will reveal.
Sources
- Fannie Mae Selling Guide, B3-3.1-01, General Income Information.
- Regulation Z, 12 C.F.R. § 1026.19. Delivery and timing requirements for the Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure; the corrected-disclosure waiting-period triggers are at § 1026.19(f)(2)(ii), which include the addition of a prepayment penalty.
- IRS Form 4506-C authorises release of a tax transcript. The signed authorisation and the returned transcript are separate documents proving different things, and a file may contain one without the other.
- Form numbers in this reference are the commonly used industry shorthand. An earlier version associated HMDA reporting with a numbered form; that association could not be confirmed against a named authority and has been removed rather than caveated.