How can I borrow in order to improve a home I just bought?
"Be careful that pride is not getting in the way of making a good decision.  As it stands now what difference does it make to have 200K worth of debt and a 200K house or 225K of debt and a 250K house?  Sure you would have a 25K higher net worth, but is that really important?  Some may even argue that such an increase is not real as equity in primary residence might not be a good indication of wealth. While there is nothing wrong with sitting down with a banker, most are likely to see your scheme as dubious.  Home improvements rarely have a 100% ROI and almost never have a 200% ROI, I'd say you'd be pretty lucky to get a 65% ROI. That is not to say they will deny you.  The banks are in the business of lending money, and have the goal of taking as much of your hard earned paycheck as possible.  They are always looking to ""sheer the sheep"". Why not take a more systematic approach to improving your home?  Save up and pay cash as these don't seem to cause significant discomfort.  With that size budget and some elbow grease you can probably get these all done in three years. So in three years you'll have about 192K in debt and a home worth 250K or more." It depends on your equity(assets -  liabilities). If you have a lot of equity, banks will be happy to lend you money because they now they can always seize your assets. If you don't have a lot of equity another option is to go to hard money lenders. They charge high rates and some of them lend-to-own, but is an option. And consider what Pete said, you might be a little optimistic.
Others have covered the usual vehicles for getting money out of a property. There's another category of home loan called a hard money loan. It would take a lot of inquiries to find a hard money loan given your needs, but chances are its doable. The terms can be onerous, and hard money lenders don't mess around when it comes to foreclosing after a few missed payments. It's an off-the-radar industry and the private lenders and specialized trustees operate together with strike-force precision. Trustees normally should be trust-able by borrower and lender, but in the case I describe below, one man owned the small company that lent, and the small company that acted as trustee. Borrower beware. Yet, if your credit score and income are dismal, but your home equity is great, hard money is the only way to borrow against your home. In making hard money loans, lenders don't consider your credit score or income, just how much equity is in the property. I daresay they hope you'll default. They don't always hang onto the loans. If you look like a payer instead of someone they can foreclose on, they might sell the loan to someone who wants a stable monthly income. You don't know a thing about that person.  A Cautionary Tale: *Check out HankandHelen.blogspot.com for a currently-unfolding saga, in which an elderly couple's grandson convinced them to let him take title to their house, borrow against it, invest the proceeds, and share the profits. It didn't work that way. He went through hard-money lenders. He borrowed $360,000 and then $65,000. Those were mysteriously paid off (total mystery at this point), and he borrowed $47,000.  About a year later, he lost the house by defaulting the $47,000 loan. He was only about $2000 behind in payments when the trustee issued a notice of default, followed by a notice of sale. The trustee put the place up for auction, which didn't require a court order: that's the way it is in California and many western states, and a few others. The hard money lender bought the loan at auction for $83,000, and a home worth about $800,000 no longer belonged to the grandson.  A fundraiser brought in about $120,000 and the couple bought a mobile home in a mobile home park. The acre of land and swimming pool they used to own will be for sale soon, or possibly demolished for a mansion to be built. (House in the area go for about $2.5M when improved with very large, new houses.)* I poke around PropertyShark.com when I see a house bought cheaply at a foreclosure auction. Quite often the (former) borrower had inherited the house, treated it like a piggy bank, defaulted, and boom--no more house. It never makes sense to put a house at risk for a small amount like $5000. If you can't pay those credit card bills, the lenders can hound you and maybe get a court order to extract something from your checking account every month, but they can't take your belongings. When you sign a deed of trust or mortgage, you're giving a third party the right to kick you out of your home and take possession of it. You don't have any say in the matter. You might go to court, and say whatever you feel like saying, but if you owe many payments and can't pay them immediately, you're very likely to be out of luck. Someone mentioned paying off credit card balances with the highest interest rates first. That's done by throwing whatever cash you have at them while paying the minimum on the lower-rate balances. That's financially sound, but there's a technique that turns out to be more motivating for some, which is attacking the lowest balance first. It leads to the quickest reduction in the number payments you're required to make every month, and quickly lets you add the money you were applying to the smallest balance to the payment you make on the next-smallest balance. (Close each card as you pay it off if you don't want to accumulate debt again.) P.S. I don't know what your home's feed is, so I didn't address that. If it's some kind of rental income, every lender I have encountered credits 75% of the current monthly rent toward your gross income. They assume there will be vacancies and other costs. "The first red-flag here is that an appraisal was not performed on an as-is basis - and if it could not be done, you should be told why. Getting an appraisal on an after-improvement basis only makes sense if you are proposing to perform such improvements and want that factored in as a basis of the loan. It seems very bizarre to me that a mortgage lender would do this without any explanation at all. The only way this makes sense is if the lender is only offering you a loan with specific underwriting guidelines on house quality (common with for instance VA-loans and how they require the roof be of a certain maximum age - among dozens of other requirements, and many loan products have their own standards). This should have been disclosed to you during the process, but one can certainly never assume anyone will do their job properly - or it may have only mentioned in some small print as part of pounds of paper products you may have been offered or made to sign already. The bank criteria is ""reasonable"" to the extent that generally mortgage companies are allowed to set underwriting criteria about the current condition of the house. It doesn't need to be reasonable to you personally, or any of us - it's to protect lender profits by aiding their risk models. Your plans and preferences don't even factor in to their guidelines. Not all criteria are on a a sliding scale, so it doesn't necessarily matter how well you meet their other standards. You are of course correct that paying for thousands of dollars in improvements on a house you don't own is lunacy, and the fact that this was suggested may on it's own suggest you should cut your losses now and seek out a different lender.  Given the lender being uncooperative, the only reason to stick with it seems to be the sunk cost of the appraisal you've already paid for. I'd suggest you specifically ask them why they did not perform an as-is appraisal, and listen to the answer (if you can get one). You can try to contact the appraiser directly as well with this question, and ask if you can have the appraisal strictly as-is without having a new appraisal. They might be helpful, they might not. As for taking the appraisal with you to a new bank, you might be able to do this - or you might not. It is strictly up to each lender to set criteria for appraisals they accept, but I've certainly known of people re-using an appraisal done sufficiently recently in this way. It's a possibility that you will need to write off the $800 as an ""education expense"", but it's certainly worth trying to see if you can salvage it and take it with you - you'll just have to ask each potential lender, as I've heard it go both ways. It's not a crazy or super-rare request - lenders backing out based on appraisal results should be absolutely normal to anyone in the finance business. To do this, you can just state plainly the situation. You paid for an appraisal and the previous lender fell through, and so you would like to know if they would be able to accept that and provide you with a loan without having to buy a whole new appraisal. This would also be a good time to talk about condition requirements, in that you want a loan on an as-is basic for a house that is inhabitable but needs cosmetic repair, and you plan to do this in cash on your own time after the purchase closes. Some lenders will be happy to do this at below 75%-80% LTV, and some absolutely do not want to make this type of loan because the house isn't in perfect condition and that's just what their lending criteria is right now.  Based on description alone, I don't think you really should need to go into alternate plans like buy cash and then get a home equity loan to get cash out, special rehab packages, etc. So I'd encourage you to try a more straight-forward option of a different lender, as well as trying to get a straight answer on their odd choice of appraisal order that you paid for, before trying anything more exotic or totally changing your purchase/finance plans." I don't know any clever way to do what you're describing.  And, in a sense, you can see why there might not be one.  A mortgage isn't just a magical way to reduce your housing expenses; it's a tradeoff in which you agree to a long-term commitment in exchange for fixed costs (or at least costs with a prearranged structure) over that long term.  If you're unwilling to accept the obligation of paying for and maintaining the property over a long period, you can't really expect to reap the benefits of lowered costs.  Part of the reason people say buying is better is because people often do live in the same place for a long time, in which case, if they rent, they might miss out on savings they could have had if they bought instead.  If you're not going to live in the same place for a long time, buying may not actually be better for you. It may be possible to get more cash than you currently have. For example, If you have $200,000, you could buy a distressed property for $150,000, spend $50,000 on renovations, get it appraised for $300,000 and then cash out refi $240,000 (keeping 20% equity to avoid MIPs) to invest. This would be analogous to flipping a house for yourself. Normally flippers buy a house for cheap, then sell it to someone else for way more than their total outlay in purchase + improvements. The only difference here is there's no 3rd party - you stay in the house and essentially buy it from yourself with the mortgage. "I see two important things missing from your ongoing costs: maintenance and equipment. I also don't see the one-time costs of buying and moving. Maintenance involves doing some boring math like ""roofs go every 20 years or so and a new roof would cost $20k, so I need $1000 a year in the roof fund. Furnaces go every 20 years and cost $5k, so I need $250 a year in the furnace fund."" etc etc. Use your own local numbers for both how long things last and how much they cost to replace. One rule of thumb is a percentage of the house (not house and land) price each year keeping in mind that while roof, furnace, carpet, stove, toilets etc all need to get replaced eventually, not everything does - the walls for example cost a lot to build but don't wear out - and not all at a 20 year pace. Some is more often, some is less often. I've heard 5% but think that's too high. Try 3% maybe? So if you paid $200,000 for a $100,000 house sitting on $100,000 of land, you put $3000 a year or about $250 a month into a repair fund. Then ignore it until something needs to be repaired. When that happens, fund the repair from the savings. If you're lucky, there will always be enough in there. If the house is kind of old and on its last legs, you might need to start with a 10 or 20k infusion into that repair fund. Equipment means a lawnmower and trimmer, a snow shovel, tools for fixing things (screwdriver, hammer, glue, pliers, that sort of thing.) Maybe tools for gardening or other hobbies that house-owners are likely to have. You might need to prune back some trees or bushes if nothing else. Eventually you get tools for your tools such as a doo-dad for sharpening your lawnmower. Well, lots of doo-dads for sharpening lots of things.  One time expenses include moving, new curtains, appliances if they don't come with the house, possibly new furniture if you would otherwise have a lot of empty rooms, paint and painting equipment, and your housewarming party. There are also closing costs associated with buying a house, and you might need to give deposits for some of your utilities, or pay to have something (eg internet) installed. Be sure to research these since you have to pay them right when you have the least money, as you move in." If you intend to flip this property, you might consider either a construction loan or private money. A construction loan allows you to borrow from a bank against the value of the finished house a little at a time. As each stage of the construction/repairs are completed, the bank releases more funds to you. Interest accrues during the construction, but no payments need to be made until the construction/repairs are complete.  Private money works in a similar manner, but the full amount can be released to you at once so you can get the repairs done more quickly. The interest rate will be higher. If you are flipping, then this higher interest rate is simply a cost of doing business. Since it's a private loan, you ca structure the deal any way you want. Perhaps accruing interest until the property is sold and then paying it back as a single balloon payment on sale of the property. To find private money, contact a mortgage broker and tell them what you have in mind.  If you're intending to keep the property for yourself, private money is still an option. Once the repairs are complete, have the bank reassess the property value and refinance based on the new amount. Pay back the private loan with equity pulled from the house and all the shiny new repairs. "That is called ""substitution of collateral."" And yes, it can be done, but only with consent of the lender. The ""best case"" for this kind of maneuver is if the second house is larger and more valuable than the first. Another possibility is that you have two mortgages on the first house and none on the second, and you want to move the second mortgage on the first house to the second one, effectively making it a ""first"" mortgage. In these instances, the lender has a clear incentive to allow a substitution of collateral, because the second one is actually better than the first one. The potential problem in your case, is if the second house were more expensive than the first house, you could not use the sale proceeds of the first house as to buy the second house without borrowing additional money. In that case, a possible solution would be to go back to the lender on your first house for a larger mortgage, with the proceeds of that mortgage being used to retire the earlier mortgage. Depending on your credit, payment record, etc. they might be willing to do this." "The problem here can be boiled down to that fact you are attempting to obtain a loan without collateral.  There are times it can be done, but you have to have a really good relationship with a banker.  Your question suggests that avenue has been exhausted. You are looking for an investor, but you are offering something very speculative.  Suppose an investor gives you 20K, what recourse does he have if you do not pay the terms of the loan?  From what income will this be paid from?  What event will trigger the capability to make a balloon payment?    Now if you can find a really handy guy that really needs a place to live could you swap rent for repairs?  Maybe.  Perhaps you buy the materials, and he does the roof in exchange for 6 months worth of rent or whatever. If you approached me with this ""investment"", the thing that would raise a red flag is why don't you have 20K to do this yourself?  If you don't how will you be able to make payments?  For example of the items you mentioned: That is a weekend worth of work and some pretty inexpensive materials.  Why does money need to be borrowed for this? A weekend worth of demo, and $500 worth of material and another weekend to build something serviceable for a rental.  Why does money need to be borrowed for this? 2K?  Why does money need to be borrowed for this? This can be expensive, but most roofing companies offer financing.  Also doing some of the work yourself can save a ton of money.  Demoing an old roof is typically about 1/3 of the roofing cost and is technically simple, but physically difficult. So besides the new roof, you could have a lot of your list solved for less than 3K and three weekends worth of work.  You are attempting to change this into a rental, not the Taj Mahal." You'd probably need to prove you can run the business if you want a loan. The best proof you can have is to run the business.  Unfortunately that also means that the price of the alley could go up. OP needs to start thinking about a negotiation strategy soon. "If I have a house that its market value went from $100k to $140k can I get HELOC $40K? Maybe - the amount that you can borrow depends on the market value of the house, so if you already have $100k borrowed against it, it will be tough to borrow another $40k without paying a higher interest rate, since there is a real risk that the value will decrease and you will be underwater.   Can I again ask for HELOC after I finish the renovation in order to do more renovation and maybe try to end up renovating the house so its value raises up to $500k? I doubt you can just ""renovate"" a house and increase its market value from $140k to $500K.  Much of a house's value is determined by its location, and you can quickly outgrow a neighborhood.  If you put $360k in improvements in a neighborhood where other homes are selling for $140k you will not realize nearly that amount in actual market value.  People that buy $500k houses generally want to be in an area where other homes are worth around the same amount.   If you want to to a major renovation (such as an addition) I would instead shop around for a Home Improvement Loan.  The main difference is that you can use the expected value of the house after improvements to determine the loan balance, instead of using the current value. Once the renovations are complete, you roll it and the existing mortgage into a new mortgage, which will likely be cheaper than a mortgage + HELOC. The problem is that the cost of the improvements is generally more than the increase in market value.  It also helps you make a wise decision, versus taking out a $40k HELOC and spending it all on renovations, only to find out that the increase in market value is only $10k and you're now underwater. So in your case, talk to a contractor to plan out what you want to do, which will tell you how much it will cost.  Then talk to a realtor to determine what the market value with those improvements will be, which will tell you how much you can borrow.  It's highly likely that you will need to pay some out-of-pocket to make up the difference, but it depends on what the improvements are and what comparable homes sell for." While I agree with the existing bulk of comments and answers that you can't tell the lender the $7k is a gift, I do think you might have luck finding a mortgage broker who can help you get a loan as a group.  (You might consider as an LLC or other form of corporation if no one will take you otherwise.)  That is, each of you will be an owner of the house and appear on the mortgage.  IIRC, as long as the downpayment only comes from the collective group, and the income-to-debt ratio of the group as a whole is acceptable, and the strongest credit rating of the group is good, you should be able to find a loan.  (You may need a formal ownership agreement to get this accepted by the lender.)  That said, I don't know if your income will trump your brother's situation (presumably high debt ratio or lower than 100% multiplier on his income dues to its source), but it will certainly help. As to how to structure the deal for fairness, I think whatever the two of you agree to and put down in writing is fine.  If you each think you're helping the other, than a 50/50 split on profits at the sale of the property seems reasonable to me.   I'd recommend that you actually include in your write up a defined maximum period for ownership (e.g. 5yr, or 10yr, etc,) and explain how things will be resolved if one side doesn't want to sell at that point but the other side does. Just remember that whatever percentages you agree to as ownership won't effect the lender's view of payment requirements.  The lender will consider each member of the group fully and independently responsible for the loan.  That is, if something happens to your brother, or he just flakes out on you, you will be on the hook for 100% of the loan.  And vice-versa.  Your write up ought to document what happens if one of you flakes out on paying agreed upon amounts, but still expects there ownership share at the time of sale. That said, if you're trying to be mathematically fair about apportioning ownership, you could do something like the below to try and factor in the various issues into the money flow: The above has the benefit that you can start with a different ownership split (34/66, 25/75, etc.) if one of you wants to own more of the property. "No you should not borrow money at 44.9%.  I would recommend not borrowing money except for a home with a healthy deposit (called down payment outside UK). in December 2016, i had financial crisis So that was like 12 days ago.  You make it sound like the crisis was a total random event, that you did nothing to cause it. Financial crises are rarely without fault.  Common causes are failure to understand risk, borrowing too much, insuring too little, improper maintenance, improper reserves, improper planning, etc...  Taking a good step or two back and really understanding the cause of your financial crisis and how it could be avoided in the future is very useful.  Talk to someone who is actually wealthy about how you could have behaved differently to avoid the ""crisis"". There are some small set of crises that are no fault of your own.  However in those cases the recipe to recovery is patience.  Attempting to recover in 12 days is a recipe for further disaster. Your willingness to consider borrowing at 44% suggests this crisis was self-inflicted.  It also indicates you need a whole lot more education in personal finance.  This is reinforced by your insatiable desire for a high credit score.  Credit score is no indication of wealth, and is meaningless until you desire to borrow money.  From what I read, you should not be borrowing money. When the time comes for you to buy a home with a mortgage, its fairly easy to have a high enough credit score to borrow at a good rate.  You get there by paying your bills on time and having a sufficient deposit.    Don't chase a high credit score at the expense of building real wealth." As noted above but with sources An improvement materially adds to the value   of your home, considerably prolongs its useful   life, or adapts it to new uses. You must add the   cost of any improvements to the basis of your   home. You cannot deduct these costs. Source Page 11, Adjusted Basis, Improvements Second, A repair   keeps your home in an ordinary, efficient operating   condition. It does not add to the value of   your home or prolong its life. Repairs include repainting   your home inside or outside, fixing your   gutters or floors, fixing leaks or plastering, and   replacing broken window panes. You cannot   deduct repair costs and generally cannot add   them to the basis of your home. Source Page 12, Adjusted Basis, Repairs versus improvements Generally, an expense for repairing or maintaining   your rental property may be deducted if you   are not required to capitalize the expense.  You must capitalize any expense   you pay to improve your rental property.   An expense is for an improvement if it results in   a betterment to your property, restores your   property, or adapts your property to a new or   different use. Source Page 5, Repairs and Improvements  Good Luck, I recognize you are probably somewhere in the middle of various steps here... but I'd start and go through one-by-one in a disciplined way. That helps to cut through the overwhelming torrent of information that's out there. Here is my start at a general checklist: others can feel free to edit it or add their input. How 'much' house would you like to buy in terms of $$$ and bedrooms/sq ft. You can start pretty general here, but the idea is to figure out if you can actually afford a brand new 4bd/3ba 2,500 sq ft house (upwards of $500K in your neck of the woods according to trulia.com). Or maybe with your current resources you'll be looking at something like a townhome that is more entry-level but still yours. Some might recommend that this is a good time to talk to any significant others/whomevers and understand/manage expectations. My wife usually cares a lot about schools at this stage, but I think it's too early. Just ballpark whether you're looking at a $500K house, a $300K house, or a $200K townhome.  How much house can you afford in terms of monthly payments only... (not considering other costs like utilities yet). Looking around at calculators like this one from bankrate.com can help you figure this out. Set the interest rate @ 5%, 30-year loan, and change the 'mortgage amount' until you have something that is about 80%-90% of what you currently pay in rent each month. I'll get to 'why' to undershoot your rent payment later.  Crap... can't afford my dream house... If you don't have the down payment to make the numbers work (remember that this doesn't even include closing costs yet), there are other loan options like FHA loans that can go as low as about 5% down payment. The math would be the same but you replace 0.8 with 0.95.  Then, look at your personal budget. Come up with general estimates of what you currently bring in and spend each month overall. Just ballpark it...  Next, figure what you currently spend towards housing in particular. Whether you are paying for it or your landlord is paying for it, someone pays for a lot of different things for housing. For now, my list would include (1) Rent, (2) Mortgage Payment, (3) Electricity, (4) Gas, (5) Sewer, (6) Water, (7) Trash, (8) Other utilities... TV/Internet/Phone, (9) Property Insurance, (10) Renter's Insurance, and (11) Property Taxes.  I would put it into a table in Excel somewhere that has 3 columns... The first has the labels, the second will have what you spend now, and the third will have what you might spend on each one as a homeowner. If you pay it now, put it in the second column. If your landlord pays it right now, leave it out as that's included in your rent payment. Obviously each cell won't be filled in. Fill in the rest of the third column. You won't pay rent anymore, but you will have a mortgage payment. You probably have a good estimate of any electricity bills, etc that you currently pay, but those may be slightly higher in a house vs. a condo or an apartment. As for things like sewer, water, trash or other 'community' utilities, my bet would be that your landlord pays for those. If you need a good estimate ask around with some co-workers or friends that own their own places. They would also be a good resource for property insurance estimates... shooting from the hip I would say about $100/month based on this website. (I'm not affiliated).  The real 'ouch' is going to be property tax rates. Based on the data from this website, your county is about 9% of property value. So add that into the third column as well.  Can you really afford a house? round 2 Now... add up the third column and see how that monthly expense amount on housing compares against your current monthly budget. If it's over, you don't have to give up, but you should just understand how much your decision to purchase a house will strain your budget. Also, you should use this information to look again at 'how much house can you afford.'  Now, do some more research. If you need to get a revised loan amount based on the FHA loan decision, then use the bankrate calculator to find out what the monthly payment is for a 95% loan against your target price. But remember that an FHA loan will also carry PMI that is extra on top of your monthly payment. Or, if you need to revise your mortgage payment downwards (or upwards) change the loan amount accordingly.  Once you've got the numbers set, look for properties that fit. This way you can have a meaningful discussion with yourself or other stakeholders about what you can afford. As far as arranging financing... a realtor will be able and willing to point you in the right direction for obtaining funding, etc. And at that point you can just check anything you're offered by shopping interest rates, etc against what the internet has to say.  Feel free to ask us, too... it's hard to give much better direction without more specifics. "Sell 200 at 142. What does that mean? I haven't seen the movie, so I won't try to put anything in story context.  ""Sell 200 at 142"" means to sell 200 units (usually shares, but in this case it would likely be gallons or barrels of orange juice or pounds or tons of frozen juice).   In general, this could mean that you have 200 units and want to sell what you have.  Or you could borrow 200 units from someone and sell those--this is called a naked short.  In this case, it seems that what they are selling is a futures contract.  With a futures contract, you are promising to obtain orange juice by some future date and sell it for the agreed price.  You could own an orange grove and plan to turn your oranges into juice.  Or you could buy a futures contract of oranges to turn into juice.  Or you could arbitrage two futures contracts such that one supplies the other, what they're doing here.   In general people make profits by buying low and selling high.  In this case they did so in reverse order.  They took the risk of selling before they had a supply.  Then they covered their position by purchasing the supply.  They profited because the price at which they bought was lower than the price at which they sold.   The reason why this is necessary is that before buying the oranges, the orange juice makers need to know that they can make a profit.  So they sell orange juice on the futures market.  Then they know how much they can afford to pay for oranges on a different market.  And the growers know how much they can get for oranges, so they can pay people to water and pick them.   Without the futures markets, growers and orange juice makers would have to take all the risk themselves.  This way, they can share risks with each other and financiers.  Combined with insurance, this allows for predictable finances.  Without it, growers would have to be wealthy to afford the variation in crop yields and prices."