I'm in PA also and lenders in my region of the state are still only considering giving mortgages to those who can cough up 20% cash against the cost of the house constuction IN ADDITION TO the value of the land being fully paid for completely. Example: If one owns a free-and-clear-paid-for $40,000 lot and wants to build a 300,000 house, the lenders are STILL requiring 20% of $300,000 or $60,000 cash down PLUS the FULL LOT VALUE ($40,000) as collateral against the mortgage. Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants and other professionals are having a hard time qualifying for mortgages under these terms and few builders are building because their clients can't qualify because of the tight banking regulations. If you are NOT in this exclusive club and can NOT afford more than 20% down and have a free-and-clear lot....then you don't stand any chance right now of getting a mortgage in Pennsylvania under most circumstances.... Sorry.

Laura, So sorry you are having a tough time finding a CP loan. I do understand what you are going thru since we went thru very similarly hard time finding our CP loan. Next best advice is to lock into an ARM with the lowest possible fees and that will cost you the least in interest during construction, no matter what the final rate is. Then, figure out who you will be using to refi to a Fixed and have them help you keep a VERY close eye on the rate market. If they start to rapidly deteriorate, you can lock into a long lock period for a Fixed rate refinance ... you will go ahead and be underwritten and will close on the refi into a Fixed as soon as your construction is finished. This lender or broker needs to be someone who has access to Mortgage Baked Securities market that they can monitor the movement for you. Rate lock periods can generally be for up to 60 days. Some lenders will allow 90 day locks. Other lenders will allow even longer lock periods with an upfront fee. Keep in mind .. As a general rule, the longer your lock period, the worse the rate at the same origination cost. I.e. If you are paying 1% origination

Kelly When you say "We are in contract on the lot" - with whom? Is it an independent seller of the land or with a builder? if with a builder - what type (custom home builder or large residential builder like Toll Brothers)? These answers are needed to better help you out. If you put a contract on a lot with an independent seller of the land - then don't do a seperate land & construction loan. Simply wait until your current house sells and buy the land with that money. I will explain why in a minute. If you are buying through a custom builder who owns the lot, then don't do a land loan either. If you are buying through a large residential builder, the land and house are bundled together in the purchase price and the mortgage loan you get will cover both land & house. Only 1 loan is needed - and you don't close on that loan until the house is done. Getting a loan on bare land with no house on it is expensive (higher interest rates and harder to qualify ) because it is a bigger risk to a bank. It is usually harder to sell bare land than one with a house it (exceptions to this rule are in places like Malibu, CA). Why pay points, loan origination fees, and closing costs on a seperate land loan that you can purchase with cash? Typically when you apply for a construction loan, the land value is included as part of the estimated value of the house/land when it is complete. This is important because that total value will be used to calculate how much money you can borrow. Let's say your land is worth $50K (and you own it out right with no loan) and the house when complete is worth $350K (the appraised value) - then the total appraised value of the property when completed would be $400K. If you put 25% of your own money (the land value and your planned cash into the house is included) into the construction project, then the bank will let you borrow $300K for the house project assuming you qualify for that payment. Note that the appraised value of the house IS NOT the contract price for the new house. The construction loan can be seperate from the mortage BUT I would not recommend you go that route. There are banks who offer construction loans that will convert into the mortgage when the house is done. You close once on the construction loan (pay points & loan origination fee + closing costs) at the start, then you convert at the end and pay no other CLOSING costs. BUT watch out for this, at the end when you convert you will have to pay up to 6 months of estimated future taxes & insurance to seed the escrow account for your new mortgage loan so you will need to bring money to the table when you convert at the end (these aren't CLOSING costs per se but it is money out of your pocket). But at least you only pay closing costs and loan orgination fees once instead of twice. The way the construction loan works is basically like a line of credit. You only pay on the loan amount as you draw from the line of credit - and multiple draws occur as the house is built (5 to 7 draws are typical). These draws are tied to completed stages of the house like plans complete & permits approved, foundation complete, framing & roof complete, rough in plumbing/electrical/HVAC complete, drwall complete, painting complete, final finishes complete, etc. So during the construction process - your monthly payment on the construction loan will incrementally increase as draws are paid out to the builder. That is why I suggest that you use as much of your own cash to make the initial draw payments to the builder and then draw down on the construction loan as late in the process as you can. Reason is that you want to minimize your payments on the construction loan - which are essentuially just interest payments. If you are paying rent and construction loan costs at the same time you can see that minimizing the double payments for as long as you can make it easier on you financially. Example. let's say that you own that 50K piece of land and you have another $150K in cash from the sale of the house. You decide that you want to keep $50K in your pocket (to cover any possible overages - a good idea) and the other $100K to be used on the new house, and you have the $300K loan ready to go (so you have up to 400K to cover building costs on a project that should cost let's say 300K). So you start the project - you use YOUR $100K of money to pay the builder for the first 2 or 3 draws and the bank money money to cover the rest (you can also do a mixed payment where you put in some of your own money and you use some of the the bank money to cover a particular draw). So you pay the first $100K and let's say the house winds up actually costing you $325K because of a few oopses and some upgrades you decided to make. At the end, you only used $225K of bank money and $100K of your money. You only paid interest on the portions of the $225K as you paid the builder. You don't pay interest on the other $75K that you did not draw from the bank. When you convert the construction loan to the mortgage, your new mortgage will be for $225K. If you can use your money to cover the initial few payments to the builder you might not not have to make a constuction loan payment until 2 or 3 months into the build - and that is 2 or 3 months worth of payments that you keep in your pocket. In our build, we started the project in Sept 06 but did not make our first interest payment to the bank until late Spring 2007 which was nice because our house wasn't finished until Dec 2007 - 6 months late. You could do 2 seperate loans - one for land and one for house - but hopefully you get the point that you don't have to do it this way and it would cost you a lot more money (in loan fees and monthly payments) to have 2 seperate loans. I Hope this helps.

Is your loan only a 15 yr mortgage (in which case you'd have a large monthly payment), or is it only a 15 yr rate lock at which time, you would need to refinance to whatever rate is active at the time? If you are concerned about your monthly payment, you need to ask what it will be. Mortgage loan people are all about telling you the monthly payment. Just ask. After that, you'll want to determine if you can afford that. If you can, then refinancing to a lower rate shouldn't be a big deal even with "second closing costs". Generally, on a loan that large, you'll see a significant cost savings in interest alone by refinancing to a lower rate. And that cost-savings will be HUGE in comparison to the cost to refinance.