Bank doesn’t believe my claim of primary residence

[Matthew Scheel]

I recently bought a few real estate investment properties in Wilmington, DE. 3 single family homes actually, all of which were purchased as investments with 20% down. My partner and I currently live in the Philly area though. After exploring Wilmington, we decided we wanted to move to Wilmington ourselves. We found a house and because M&T bank offers a $5,000 grant toward closing costs, decided to use them instead of my preferred lender. M&T bank, after weeks of runaround and document requests, just rejected our claim that this house would be our primary residence. They will not provide the $5,000 grant and won’t provide any financing consistent with a primary residence. They said this is because I have 3 other investment properties in the area.  They will only offer investment financing. I’ve purchased many primary residences over the years, all of which WERE used as primary residences but I’ve never even been asked to justify my purchase let alone rejected based on the assumption that it would NOT be my primary residence. This seems nuts to me...is there anything I can do here?