Do I need a signed lease before the rent on my current house counts?

What changed, and what replaced the lease

The old instruction was simple, and it is now out of date: find a tenant, sign a lease, hand it to the lender, and the rent starts counting. The Fannie Mae selling guide section on rental income from a departing residence, dated September 2, 2026, closes that door in one sentence: “Lease agreements are not permitted for any departing residence.”

What the guide asks for instead is evidence of what your home would rent for on the open market. It directs the lender to obtain at least three comparable rental properties, and it names market analysis tools, including listing sites and the multiple listing service. That moves the work: the rent figure is now something the lender builds from the market rather than a document you produce.

The guide does not use the whole number either. Its instruction is to “Multiply the monthly gross rent(s) by 75% for the net rental income amount.” It gives no reason for the reduction and I will not invent one. The direction is what matters: the figure your lender works from is smaller than the rent you expect to collect.

What that rent can actually do for your loan

Here is the part that surprises people. The rent does not become income. The guide states the limit in its own shorthand: “If ANRI is positive, the lender may use rental income to offset the departing residence PITIA only.” In plain terms, when the adjusted rental figure comes out positive, it can be set against the housing payment on the home you are leaving, meaning principal, interest, taxes, insurance and any association dues, and against nothing else.

Offset means cancel, up to a limit. Strong rent can reduce or erase the departing home’s housing payment inside the qualifying calculation. Once that payment is gone, anything left over stops working for you. It never becomes spendable income for the purchase. That is why plans that look obvious on paper come back declined.

The same section attaches a cash requirement to how long you have been a landlord: “The lender must verify the borrower has six months of reserves to cover the PITIA obligation for the vacated property when the borrower has less than 12 months of property management experience.” If this would be your first rental, plan on holding six months of the departing home’s housing payment in reserve, on top of what the new purchase costs you.

A guide rule becomes your lender’s rule on your lender’s schedule

Two things are true at once, and skipping either causes trouble. These are Fannie Mae rules, which govern loans sold to Fannie Mae rather than every loan written. And lenders move to new guide sections on their own timetables. Fannie Mae’s announcement encourages immediate adoption and requires the changes for applications dated on or after November 1, 2026, which tells you when the industry has to be there, not where any one lender stands today.

So the answer for your file comes from your lender, and four questions get it. Which guide does this loan follow? Have you adopted the September 2026 departing-residence section yet? What rent documentation do you want from me? And what reserves will you ask me to show? Ask before you give a tenant a date or write an offer.

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