If you're paying cash and the question is should you empty your reserves to buy it, that would depend on how comfortable you feel with your sporadic income.
If you're looking to obtain a mortgage, unfortunately brokers don't care that you have liquid assets to pay for it. They want to see W-2 income, which is ridiculous since someone who relies on W-2 income could lose 100 percent of it with a layoff, downsizing, firing, etc. You can point to consistent 1099 income for many years, presumably, and will never lose 100 percent of income since you have multiple clients. This obvious logic doesn't work, however. They want to see W-2 income.
Yeah, I ran into this when I was looking to change lenders. I had income, which was low the year before as I had been merrily writing off more than usual. My gross income was still high. I had been self-employed for almost twenty years at that time. It is a rental property, and I had changed tenants and increased the rent, and reduced expenses. I had enough liquid assets to discharge the mortgage as well. And rates were sitting at 200 basis points below where my current rate was.
I was completely unacceptable as an applicant. The combination of my self-employment and investment property status ticked all their risk boxes.
I had a happy ending, as my existing lender gave me a competitive rate -- only 10 basis points higher than the lowest rate being offered by the independant lender -- and my payments dropped by $200 a month despite having to go from a 40yr to a 25yr amortization (Canadians will remember that)
I talked to some of my self-employed/business owning clients about my experience. One guy who owned a brokerage firm described how the bank grilled him for 5 years of tax returns for the business he owned and looked at him like he was Mr. Risky, while one of his employees went in with his 2 week payslip and got a mortgage no trouble. The bank was able to tick the employment status box, so no problem. But they never check the health of the business that is employing you. Which is hilarious and fucked up.
As I said to my client, I'll never be sacked with two weeks notice because some employer can't make payroll.
The banks had no discernment before the financial crises, and they still don't.