Minimum mortgage amount

[Daniel Lehman]

What is the minimum amount a house can be mortgaged for? I was told 65k but that would mean I can't get a conventional loan for anything less than around 80k or so figuring in for subtracting the down payment. This can't be right. Please verify!! How are people supposed to buy properties listed for 50-70k range if this is true?

I live in western NY and want to get a conventional loan for a 2-4 unit.

[Scott D Burrows]

Also, I believe the reason for the minimum is due to ratio of closing costs (lender fees) to mortgage amount. Once you get smaller and smaller mortgages the lender fees (closing amounts) don’t really change and their percentage of the loan relative to the cost of property increases to “predatory” amounts? At least, this is my impression of the reasoning. For example, my loan for $48,000, I typically pay around $3,500-$5,000 in closing and lender costs... working out to be around 10% of the total loan amount. Whereas on a $100k loan it would be around 3-5%, not increasing in proportion to loan amount in other words. So they are inversely related. The smaller the loan usually the larger the percentage of loan costs relative to loan amount.