going from hard money loan to 30 year conventional

[Matthew Thorp]

I have heard different answers but my situation is I have a $200,000 loan from hard money and want to take out a 30 year loan for $200,000. My question is the house is now worth $275,000, can I take the equity of $75,000 to use as a down payment when I go for the new loan?

[Chris Mason]

If it's been six months since you purchased, most lenders will go up to 75% LTV.

If it appraises for $275k, that comes out to $206k. After refi closing costs, you aren't going to get very much milk out of that cow.

Refinancing every 30 seconds isn't necessarily the best idea, so if there's some forced equity in the works for that place it might be best to wait until the work is done, so you can get a loan of (for example) 75% * $300k = $225k