# Gift Funds

> Gift Funds tests whether the promised payment can be supported by the borrower's resources and obligations

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:real-estate-mortgage:borrower-underwriting:gift-funds` |
| Family | Borrower Underwriting |
| Domain | Economics |
| Era | Institutional Age → Agentic Age |
| Kind | financial-instrument |
| Archetype | The Reservoir |
| Claim layers | empirical, cultural_historical, synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory |

## What it is

Gift Funds is a financial instrument in the Borrower Underwriting family, defined here by the function it performs in the property system rather than by label alone.

## What it actually does

Gift Funds tests whether the promised payment can be supported by the borrower's resources and obligations.

## Why it exists

It exists because place is unique and immovable while law, capital, information, and human lives must still coordinate around it across time.

## System mechanics

- **Who uses it:** owner, occupant, buyer, seller, lender, investor, steward, regulator
- **Incentives:** access to capital, yield, liquidity, risk allocation
- **Inputs:** capital, terms, collateral or cash flow, counterparties, risk assumptions
- **Outputs:** funding, cash-flow claims, obligations, risk allocation
- **Dependencies:** Land, Authority, Information, Capital, Time

## Archetypal reading

- **Essence:** Gift Funds tests whether the promised payment can be supported by the borrower's resources and obligations
- **Gift:** Clarity about gift funds makes a hidden allocation of place, time, authority, value, or risk available for deliberate choice.
- **Wound / Shadow:** When gift funds is treated as neutral or inevitable, its costs can be shifted to people who hold less information, authority, liquidity, or mobility.
- **Failure mode:** The failure mode appears when gift funds is stale, opaque, mispriced, misrecorded, overextended, or applied outside the conditions that made it useful.

## Lenses

- **Personal:** Notice where gift funds appears as a structure in your own commitments: what is held, promised, priced, protected, excluded, or deferred?
- **Business:** Gift Funds reveals a handoff among information, authority, incentives, operating work, and capital. Make the owner of each handoff explicit.
- **Financial:** Gift Funds changes the timing, priority, comparability, liquidity, or distribution of cash flow and risk.
- **Property:** Gift Funds changes how a physical place can be used, valued, financed, transferred, occupied, maintained, or reclaimed.
- **Community:** Gift Funds can create benefits inside one parcel while exporting costs or opportunity to neighbors, institutions, or future residents.

## Divination

The Reservoir enters the reading through Gift Funds. The issue is not only what is visible; it is which map of ownership, time, risk, authority, or belonging currently governs the situation.

**Question:** What future is being pledged through Gift Funds, and who receives protection if conditions change?

**Guidance:** Separate access from cost, payment from principal, and temporary liquidity from permanent viability.

## Game function

Moves Capital now and creates a future Claim with explicit priority and failure consequences. Initiative 3.

## Relationships

- **Mortgage Broker amplifies Gift Funds.** Mortgage Broker amplifies Gift Funds through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.
- **Reserves depends on Gift Funds.** Reserves depends on Gift Funds through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.
- **Gift Funds constrains Cash to Close.** Gift Funds constrains Cash to Close through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.
- **Gift Funds conflicts with Collateral Underwriter.** Gift Funds conflicts with Collateral Underwriter through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.

## Oppositions

- Use Value versus Exchange Value
- Speed versus Diligence

## Historical lineage and regulatory context

Read Gift Funds through the lineage of Borrower Underwriting: earlier customary or local arrangements became recorded, standardized, financed, regulated, digitized, or contested over time.

Rules vary by jurisdiction and transaction. Use the cited primary sources as starting points and verify current local law, program guides, contracts, and professional standards before operational use.

## Visual direction

Text-free rounded-square enamel artifact for Gift Funds: a luminous claim-line descending from a built form into layered earth and extending across a long brass timeline; vitreous midnight enamel, blackened steel, warm brass, copper accents, mortgage-paper cream, deep green, slate, and sky blue.

## Engine output / Sentinel handoff

The generative interpretation above is preserved as Engine Output. Sentinel factors: jurisdiction-specific rules, factual uncertainty. These factors request contextual review; they do not delete or silently rewrite the candidate.

## Research / provenance

- [Ability-to-Repay and Qualified Mortgage Rule](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/compliance/compliance-resources/mortgage-resources/ability-repay-qualified-mortgage-rule/) — Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; ATR/QM and residential underwriting.
- [Fannie Mae Selling Guide](https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/media/document/pdf/selling-guide-february-4-2026) — Fannie Mae; loan eligibility, underwriting, appraisal, delivery.
- [Freddie Mac Single-Family Seller/Servicer Guide](https://guide.freddiemac.com/) — Freddie Mac; loan eligibility, Loan Product Advisor, servicing.
