Purchasing and construction loan at same time?

[Sean Olsen]

Is it possible to buy a property, 10% down as primary residence and get a construction/remodel loan at the same time? Thanks. This would be a two year live in flip. 

[Thea Linkfield]

I used an FHA 203k loan for my current residence. The plan was to make it a live-in flip but I needed some structural repairs done before I could get bank-financing. The closing process took about 40 days I think and wasn't too bad. I had to get quotes from Contractors which was the worst part because of how long they took, but not hard at all.

I only had to put 3.5% down. You can find a bank/lender that works with these types of loans a lot. They had an appraiser that they use that just did the appraisal typical to any other appraisal.

Numbers:

Purchased house for $200,000. Got an estimate by a GC for $17,100 for repairs. Total price was now $217,100. Appraiser came in and appraised the after repair house for $215,000 (this was before any repairs had been started or anything). Lender now provided me a 96.5% loan from the $215,000 so I only had to put $7,525 down. 

I then put about $50,000 of my own money into the house, but that's a different story...

I only put the major repairs into the renovation loan because I knew a GC would charge way more than doing it myself. Only having to put 3.5% down helped me have cash to do the other renovations.