I'm Haiyan Fu, a Realtor® with Keller Williams Bay Area Estates, and most of the buyers I work with in Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are paid partly in equity. The single most common surprise in those transactions isn't the price of the house. It's the gap between total compensation as the buyer thinks of it and qualifying income as a lender is permitted to count it.

I'm not a lender, and I'm not going to walk through anyone's underwriting formula here — that belongs to the person who'll actually be reading your file. What's worth knowing before you shop is the shape of it, because the shape is what determines the price range you should be looking in.

Only Stock That Has Already Vested and Been Distributed Counts

The starting condition in the agency guidelines is that the stock has vested and been distributed to you without restrictions. Unvested stock isn't income, however certain the vesting schedule looks. Neither is stock you can see in a portal but haven't received.

The stock also has to be publicly traded. That single requirement is why pre-IPO equity at a private company generally has no path to being counted, no matter how large the paper number is.

A few forms of equity tend to surprise people: RSUs that haven't vested yet, a sign-on grant paid in stock, equity in a private company, and stock options. Each of these is treated differently from ordinary vested RSUs, and often isn't counted as income at all. If a large part of your pay takes one of these forms, that's the first question to put to a lender.

Why the Number Lags Your Compensation

Qualifying income from equity is built from what has already been distributed to you over a look-back period, valued conservatively rather than at today's close. Your lender runs that calculation; what's useful to know before you shop is simply what the construction does.

There's also a history requirement — about a year at minimum with your current employer, and generally longer where the award is performance-based — and a separate question about whether the vesting is expected to keep going. A grant with two years left and nothing behind it reads differently to a lender than an annual refresh cycle does. Where your own situation lands is a question for a lender, and it's a cheap one to ask early.

One more thing worth raising with them directly: where the income is declining, there are rules about whether it can be counted at all. For anyone whose share price sits well below where it was two years ago, that may be the first thing to put on the table.

Where the Loan Size Lines Fall in Santa Clara County

For 2026, the FHFA baseline conforming limit for a one-unit property is $832,750, and the ceiling for high-cost areas is $1,249,125. Santa Clara County sits at that ceiling.

Above $1,249,125 you're in jumbo territory, where the agency rulebook stops applying and each lender writes its own. Programs exist there, and to a narrower degree within agency guidelines, that qualify a borrower on assets rather than income, and structures that borrow against a securities portfolio exist as well. The terms are proprietary and differ a great deal from one lender to the next, which is exactly why they're worth asking about by name rather than assuming either way.

What This Might Mean If You're Buying

• The document to bring to a first lender conversation is your brokerage history — what has actually vested and distributed over the last couple of years — rather than your annual target.
• If most of your equity is a single sign-on grant, it may not count at all. That's worth establishing early rather than at underwriting.
• A vesting schedule with only a couple of years left and no refresh behind it is worth flagging to a lender at the outset, because it can change the answer.
• Two lenders can reach different answers on the same file above the county limit, because above $1,249,125 they're no longer reading the same rulebook.
• The agency guides are public, and a lender who can point to the section they're applying is telling you something useful about how carefully your file is being read.

Bottom Line

Equity compensation qualifies, and in Santa Clara County it routinely qualifies people for a great deal of house. It just arrives on a lag, priced conservatively, and only after it's genuinely in hand. Buyers who understand that before they start looking tend to shop with a number that holds up, and the ones who don't find it out at the least convenient moment.

If you're weighing a purchase in Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara or elsewhere in the county and you're not sure how your compensation will read to a lender, that's a conversation worth having before the offer, not during it. I'm happy to share my perspective, and to point you toward lenders who work with equity-heavy files regularly.