Unfortunately, that's basically the state of mortgage lending now. If you don't have an established W2, you can go piss up a rope as far as the banks are concer

Unfortunately, that's basically the state of mortgage lending now. If you don't have an established W2, you can go piss up a rope as far as the banks are concerned. It used to be that people in the author's situation could get a "stated income loan", in which you more or less say "this is what I make", and the bank doesn't (or can't) verify it. These sorts of loans were widely abused by loan officers prior to the housing crash to get people into loans they couldn't afford (of which they get a percentage, so their incentive to sell high-dollar loans was significant), and as a result the banks basically just pulled them all. If you don't have verifiable income these days, you should expect a bank to not lend to you.