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CJ Kerls
CJ Kerls Branch Manager / SVP of Mortgage Lending NMLS #243438

SoCal & Palm Springs Mortgage lending done right

Licensed across California, specializing in jumbo loans, self-employed borrowers, and second-home financing.

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Top 1% Nationwide originators
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Financing Southern California & Palm Springs Homes

CJ Kerls has spent over 35 years in mortgage lending, working with buyers across Southern California and the Palm Springs area, from first homes in the Inland Empire to desert properties throughout the Coachella Valley. Working alongside his daughter and loan partner Chelsea, CJ specializes in the details that make Southern California financing more complicated than a standard transaction: loan limits that shift from one county to the next, jumbo pricing in coastal markets, and financing quirks specific to the desert that most lenders never encounter.

Licensed in 29 states, CJ brings statewide reach paired with the kind of program knowledge that only comes from working California deals every day.

Why Southern California Home Financing Isn't One-Size-Fits-All

Southern California isn't a single market. It's several very different ones stacked next to each other, and the loan program that fits depends heavily on where you're buying. Los Angeles and Orange counties carry a high-balance conforming limit up to $1,249,125 for 2026. San Diego County's high-balance ceiling sits lower, at $1,104,000. Riverside County, home to Palm Springs and the rest of the Coachella Valley, uses the standard $832,750 conforming limit and a $690,000 FHA limit. A loan that's jumbo in one county might be conforming in the next one over, and getting that distinction wrong changes your rate, your down payment, and your qualifying requirements.

Palm Springs and the surrounding desert cities add a wrinkle almost no other California market has: land leases. A large share of Palm Springs neighborhoods, along with parts of Cathedral City and Rancho Mirage, sit on land leased from the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians rather than owned outright. Buyers own the home but lease the ground beneath it, and the length of that lease directly affects what loan term you can get. A 30-year mortgage generally needs at least 35 years left on the lease; a 15-year mortgage needs at least 20. Get this wrong and a deal can fall apart in escrow. It's the kind of detail an out-of-area lender frequently misses, and it's a big part of why understanding Coachella Valley real estate matters here.

If you're considering a Palm Springs property as an investment or a part-time rental, the city's short-term rental rules changed recently and are worth knowing before you make an offer. Palm Springs caps vacation rental permits at 20% of homes per neighborhood, and once a neighborhood hits that cap, new permits stop and a waitlist opens. New permittees are also limited to 26 rental contracts per calendar year, with junior certificates capped at six. And the certificate does not come with the house. Under the city's municipal code it expires when the property changes hands, so a buyer applies as a new permittee regardless of what the seller was operating under. If rental income is part of how you're planning to qualify or offset the mortgage, this needs to factor into your numbers early, not after you're in contract.

  • County-specific loan limit guidance, matched to where you're buying, from Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley to Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties
  • Indian lease land expertise for Palm Springs, Cathedral City, and Rancho Mirage properties, matching lease term to loan term so financing doesn't fall apart in escrow
  • Short-term rental awareness for Palm Springs investment buyers, factoring in neighborhood permit caps and annual contract limits before you make an offer
  • Jumbo financing for coastal and high-value Southern California markets where conforming limits don't stretch far enough
  • Self-employed and bank-statement programs, common among Southern California business owners and Coachella Valley hospitality and entertainment industry workers
  • Physician mortgage programs for doctors relocating to Coachella Valley hospitals like Eisenhower Health and Desert Regional Medical Center, as well as major Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego health systems
  • Statewide down payment assistance guidance, including CalHFA programs for qualifying first-time buyers anywhere in California

Southern California & Palm Springs | Mortgage FAQ

Yes. CJ Kerls originates loans across Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, and Riverside counties, including the Coachella Valley cities of Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, and La Quinta.
It depends on the county. Los Angeles and Orange counties use a 2026 high-balance conforming limit of $1,249,125, so anything above that is jumbo. San Diego County's high-balance ceiling is lower, at $1,104,000. Riverside County, which includes Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley, uses the standard conforming limit of $832,750. A loan amount that's still conforming in one county can be jumbo just a few miles away in another, so it's worth confirming the limit for your specific property before assuming you need jumbo financing.
A large share of Palm Springs, along with parts of Cathedral City and Rancho Mirage, sits on land leased from the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians rather than owned outright. Buyers own the home itself but lease the land under it, and lenders look closely at how many years remain on that lease before approving financing. It's a detail unique to this part of the desert, and it's easy for a lender unfamiliar with the Coachella Valley to overlook it until underwriting, when it's much harder to fix.
Generally, a 30-year mortgage requires at least 35 years remaining on the land lease, and a 15-year mortgage requires at least 20. If a lease is getting close to that threshold, it's worth checking the remaining term before writing an offer, since it can limit which loan terms are available to you and affect resale down the road.
They can. Palm Springs caps vacation rental certificates at 20% of homes in a given neighborhood, and once that cap is hit, new permits stop and a waitlist opens. New permittees are also limited to 26 rental contracts per calendar year, with junior certificates capped at six. If you're counting on short-term rental income to help you qualify or to cover the mortgage, it's important to confirm a property's neighborhood is under the cap and that a permit is actually available before you're in contract.

Often yes, through a DSCR loan, which qualifies you on the property's rental income instead of your personal income. No tax returns, no debt-to-income calculation, and you can take title in an LLC. Expect 20% to 25% down, a higher credit score than a standard conventional loan, and larger cash reserves, since seasonality in the desert is real.

For income, the lender will typically use an AirDNA projection on the specific address, a short-term rental appraisal, or actual booking history if the property has it. Most programs discount the AirDNA number, commonly to 80% of the projection.

Here is the Palm Springs trap, and it is one a lot of lenders miss. New permittees are limited to 26 rental contracts per calendar year, and junior certificates are capped at six. One booking counts as one contract no matter how long the guest stays, and unpaid stays are tracked too: the city maintains a friends and family list and requires a contract summary before each occupancy. An AirDNA projection knows none of that. It is built from comparable properties, and many of those are legacy permits still operating under a higher contract allowance the city chose to leave in place.

That gap never closes for a buyer, and this is the part worth understanding before you write an offer. Under the city's municipal code, a vacation rental certificate expires when the property changes ownership, and the new owner has to be issued their own before the home can be rented again. Every buyer enters as a new permittee. So a revenue model built on legacy comparables describes a booking cadence the buyer cannot legally inherit.

If nobody checks that, you end up qualifying on income the property cannot lawfully earn and buying a payment you cannot cover. The fix is to confirm the permit class and the neighborhood's density status first, then rebuild the income model around the contract limit that will actually apply to you. Our article on financing a vacation rental covers this and the tax side.

Yes. Bank-statement and self-employed loan programs qualify borrowers using business or personal bank deposits instead of tax returns, which tends to work well for Southern California business owners and for Coachella Valley hospitality, entertainment, and service industry workers whose income doesn't always show clean on a W-2.
Yes. Physician mortgage programs are available for doctors relocating to hospitals throughout the region, including Eisenhower Health and Desert Regional Medical Center in the Coachella Valley, as well as major health systems across Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties. On a primary residence purchase, these programs can offer up to 100% financing (no down payment) with a 680 credit score on loan amounts up to $1.5 million, or up to $2 million with either a 720 credit score or a 5% down payment. Fixed-rate terms (15, 20, 25, and 30-year) and hybrid ARM products are both available.
Often, yes. CalHFA offers statewide down payment and closing cost assistance programs for qualifying first-time buyers anywhere in California, including Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, and Riverside counties. Eligibility and available funding change over time, so it's worth checking early in the process rather than assuming you don't qualify.

Second home loans generally require a higher down payment than a primary residence, often around 10% for conventional financing and typically more for jumbo loans. Worth knowing that Riverside County uses the baseline conforming limit of $832,750, so desert purchases cross into jumbo territory sooner than buyers coming from Los Angeles or Orange County usually expect. The bigger constraint is rarely the down payment, though. A second home can't be qualified on its own rental income, so the full payment has to fit inside your debt-to-income ratio alongside your primary mortgage.

From there, two separate questions decide how this goes, and buyers tend to collapse them into one.

The first is whether you intend to rent the place at all. Plenty of Palm Springs second homes never get listed, and if yours is one of them the classification asks very little of you: occupy it some portion of the year, and honor the Second Home Rider you sign at closing, which commits you to keeping the property available primarily for your own use through the first year. Neither agency sets a minimum night count. What matters more for a desert purchase is whether the home sits on leased land, since the remaining lease term controls which loan terms are available to you.

The second question is whether the property can legally be rented, and it has nothing to do with your loan. Renting a second home is permitted by both agencies as long as nobody else takes control of the calendar. But Palm Springs decides separately whether a particular address can operate as a vacation rental. Neighborhood density caps close some areas to new certificates, and a certificate does not convey with the house: it expires when the property sells and the buyer applies fresh. A seller can show you a rental history you would not be able to reproduce.

So the sequence matters. Confirm the property's permit status before you settle on a loan classification, not after. Our blog post on how the loan you choose can disqualify the vacation rental tax deduction covers where the financing and the tax strategy collide.

On fee land, you own both the home and the ground beneath it, the way most buyers expect. On leased land, you own the home but make lease payments for the land itself, which usually means a lower purchase price but adds a lease term that has to line up with your loan term. Neither option is inherently better, but they finance differently, and it helps to know which one you're looking at before you fall in love with a house.
CJ Kerls
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CJ Kerls | Branch Manager & SVP of Mortgage Lending | Rate
(415) 586-6003 | cj.kerls@rate.com | www.cjkerls.com
NMLS #243438 | CA DRE #01320626 | Licensed in 29 states