The Loan Officer Grew Up Two Hours from Havana.

Rafael Amaro Was Born in Cuba.

He has been in mortgage for 25 years, the majority of it in South Florida, which means the majority of it working with buyers whose income, assets, and documentation come from countries the US mortgage system was not designed to accommodate. He is business-fluent in Spanish. He has closed transactions for buyers from every major Latin American market.

This is what he has learned about what works.

The Documentation Problem, Specifically

Latin American buyers are not a uniform group. A Venezuelan buyer relocating their family to Coral Gables has a fundamentally different financial profile than a Colombian developer building a Miami Beach investment portfolio. What they often share is documentation that falls outside the US template: self-employment income declared differently than US standards require; business income from entities structured for tax efficiency in the home country — meaning reported income understates actual cash flow; assets held outside the US, often in offshore structures or home-country accounts; limited or no US credit history, even for buyers who have been visiting or spending in the US for years.

The consequence at a conventional lender is a decline. The consequence at Rafael's desk is a question: what does this buyer actually have, and which program reads it accurately?

The Three Programs That Serve Latin American Buyers

Bank Statement Program. For self-employed buyers and business owners, this is the most common qualification path. Rafael uses 12 to 24 months of personal or business bank statements from the borrower's home-country account. Income is calculated from documented deposits — not tax-reported adjusted gross income. For a Colombian business owner whose tax filings reflect aggressive deductions, bank statements often reveal income that is substantially higher than what the return shows.

P&L Program. For buyers whose income exists in verifiable form but not in a US-filing-compatible format, a CPA or PTIN-registered accountant prepares a profit and loss statement that serves as the qualifying document. No tax returns are required — US or home-country. Global P&L is accepted, meaning income from operations in Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, or any other market qualifies through this structure.

Foreign National Portfolio Program. For buyers with no US credit file and non-US income that does not fit the bank statement or P&L framework, the foreign national portfolio program provides a direct path. Credit is assessed through an international credit report from the borrower's home country or a reference letter from a primary relationship bank.

What Down Payment Sourcing Looks Like for Latin American Buyers

AML compliance is more documentation-intensive for Latin American buyers than for most other international profiles — not because of higher risk, but because of heightened regulatory scrutiny of funds originating from certain Latin American markets. Rafael addresses this proactively.

Down payment sourcing documentation typically requires three to six months of bank statements tracing the origin of funds through two to three levels. For buyers moving capital from a Colombian or Venezuelan account, the documentation package needs to establish a clean paper trail from business income to personal account to the wire.

Buyers who have been accumulating funds over time across multiple accounts should expect to document the movement of those funds comprehensively. This is not unusual and does not imply suspicion — it is a standard compliance requirement that Rafael has navigated hundreds of times.

Conducting Business in Spanish

Rafael is business-fluent in Spanish. Every part of the transaction — from the initial strategy call through document review, program selection, lender communication, and close — can be conducted in Spanish if the client prefers.

For Latin American buyers navigating a system that is not their own, working in their primary language is not a courtesy. It is the difference between understanding what they are signing and hoping they do. Rafael has seen transactions go wrong at closing because a buyer did not fully understand a term they agreed to six weeks earlier. That does not happen when the conversation happens in the right language from the start.