The mortgage rate you see in the news, on Zillow, on any rate-tracking site, is for a primary residence. A short-term rental almost never qualifies as one. Here's what applies instead.

Primary Residence

The house you live in. This is the loan every headline rate is describing, and it's the lowest-rate category by a meaningful margin, since it carries the least risk for a lender.

Second Home

A property you personally use part of the year, a lake house, a cabin you visit, something with real personal use attached. You cannot use projected rental income to qualify for this loan, and it cannot be part of a rental pool or run like a full-time business. Rate runs roughly 0.25 to 1 percentage point above primary, the lightest premium of the 3. One real caution: misrepresenting a rental property as a second home to get that rate is mortgage fraud.

Investment Property

A property purchased primarily to generate income, which is what a short-term rental usually is. This carries the highest rate premium of the 3, because lenders know a borrower will pay their own home's mortgage before an income property's if money gets tight.

Investment property loans split into 2 real paths, and hosts often only know about one of them.

A conventional investment loan

It qualifies you the normal way: Income, credit, and personal debt-to-income. On top of that, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac add a disclosed pricing adjustment, since investment properties default more often than primary residences. As of August 2026, that puts conventional investment property rates around 7.3% to 7.8% for well-qualified borrowers, roughly 0.5 to 1 point above the primary residence rate.

A DSCR loan

It qualifies you on the property's rental income instead of your personal finances. Divide the expected monthly rent by the full mortgage payment, and if that ratio is 1.0 or higher, the property covers itself on paper, no W-2s, no tax returns. STR buyers who are self-employed, scaling past their first few properties, or without 2 years of tax returns reflecting their real income often go this route instead. As of August 2026, DSCR rates on residential investment properties run roughly 6.4% to 8%, with the strongest credit and cash flow profiles landing near the bottom of that range.

What To Do Before You Buy

1. Confirm which category your lender will classify the property under, second home or investment property, before you assume either one.
2. If it's an investment property, decide between conventional and DSCR based on your income documentation and how many properties you're financing.
3. Ask your lender for their current rate for your specific category and loan type, not the "rate today" headline.
4. Rebuild your cash flow projection with the real number before you make an offer.

Rates and lender requirements shift often and vary by lender. The figures above reflect general benchmarks as of August 12, 2026.

Before you make an offer, get a second opinion from the Host Camp team. We've already seen a purchase like yours, in some form, hundreds of times. It costs nothing, and it could save you years of cleanup on a property that doesn't work.

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Written by: Kai Andrew

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