Elllie,
I was looking over some of the questions that had been posted in the sections and noticed your question in particular. You may have already made a real estate decision on purchasing a property, so I may be too late getting this infromation to you. But I will let you know that Wells Fargo offers such a program. They will actually lend you additional money to do repairs, redo kitchen, build garages, and so on. You can speak to Melinda Smailes from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage you can reach her @304-573-8096 or e-mail her, melind.smailes@wellsfargo.com. They offer a program to handle such needs and it will take a 60 day closing on the property. But it will be for estimates for the additonal work, proof of the contractor is legal, and then they will even give the contractor funds to start the project. It is a real nice program, if this is a forclosure or something that has some major defects this will not work for you. But if you are looking at an older home that needs some updating or some improvements this is a great program for a home buyer such as yourself. May be worth checking into and you will know where you stand.

If you're looking to do that, the FHA 203K loan will work best for you. It still has the low rate of FHA plus you'll have minimal down (3.5%) and you'll probably be able to take out a little more. You'll have two aprsl times. One before you buy then one after the work is done. They want to make sure that the extra$$ is going to the new house and not existing debt. Best of luck and I hope this helped!

Stacy King
"Because Your Home Is Your Castle"
RE/MAX Precision Realty
Newington, CT 06037