Owner financing in Arizona,
by the numbers

Most of Arizona's bank denials were about paper. Of the 11,691 home-purchase applications denied in Arizona in 2025, the first reason given was the debt-to-income ratio on 4,413, credit history on 1,908 and the property itself on 1,565. Insufficient cash came first on 605. Another 21,023 applications were withdrawn before the bank decided, and they are not in any denial count. If you withdrew before you got a formal no, you are in these numbers too. If you never applied because you knew the answer, you are in no one's numbers, and this page is still for you.

Put the paper reasons together (debt-to-income ratio, credit history, unverifiable information and employment history) and they are 7,412 of the 11,691, by our grouping.

Why the ratio? The bank counts income its own way, such as a business owner's profit after deductions, and then caps the payment at a share of that counted income. That counted income can be lower than the money that actually arrives.

In the Phoenix area, on the same basis, the debt-to-income ratio came first on 3,144 of 7,670 denials.

If the paper reasons are your reasons, here is how you still buy.

Method: Arizona and Phoenix figures are our own tabulation of the 2025 loan-level records published by the federal HMDA Data Browser (home-purchase applications; 11,691 Arizona and 7,670 Phoenix-area denied records, 21,023 Arizona withdrawn; first-listed reason throughout; Phoenix area is metro area 38060), downloaded and read on October 19, 2026. Reason labels are shortened from the 2025 HMDA Filing Instructions Guide; the "exempt" rows are lenders not required to report a reason and stay in every total. The paper-reasons grouping is ours, not a federal category. The federal file updates weekly, so counts can move slightly.

After settling a consumer fraud case against two Tucson real estate companies in 2023, the Arizona Attorney General gave buyers five recommendations. We list them because they are the right questions to ask anyone you buy from, including us.

The five recommendations are from the Arizona Attorney General's press release of March 9, 2023, read in full on October 19, 2026. The answers are ours.

Every Arizona area with a market report here, with the seller-financed home purchases recorded in the last 12 months where we hold the county's affidavits, and the typical home value. These are the whole market's sales, not ours.

Seller-financed purchases: Maricopa County affidavits of value, residential sales, the twelve months through August 31, 2026, counted once per deed, by the city on the county's record for city rows. Typical home value: Zillow Home Value Index, September 2026, the latest month published, as shown on each area's market report. Every count is the whole market's.

This page is for people a bank turns away on paper or over the house: the self-employed with deductions the lender will not add back; 1099 and gig workers with a gap last year; families past a bankruptcy or a lost home; savers whose score is under the bank's floor; ITIN holders; and buyers whose chosen house failed the bank's appraisal (the homes we sell do not go through a bank's appraisal). If one of those is you and you can carry a payment, we sell homes to exactly those people. The full list, with the bank's rule under each, is on the owner-financed homes page.

Sources: Maricopa County Recorder affidavits of value (A.R.S. 11-1133); the FFIEC/CFPB HMDA Data Browser, 2025 loan-level records; the Arizona Revised Statutes at azleg.gov; the Arizona Attorney General's press release of March 9, 2023; Zillow Home Value Index. How we compute every number.