If a house has major issues, you can't get a conventional mortgage on it,,not FHA, Fannie or Freddie,,they don't want the collateral to be a house that needs repair at the time of the loan.For investment properties I use hard money, then refinance to conventional financing after the repairs, but that's investment property and expensive.A 203K is designed for what your doing, but you pay PMI, and I think the only way to do it would be as your mortgage broker outlined.I will say my experience is in investment property, so there may be other options for an owner occupied that I am not familiar with, go talk to a local band and see if they can help.

You want to work with someone (broker, attorney, or someone else) that has been there and done that and can structure the contract so that you can design out entitlement risk.

I haven't actually looked at the numbers for that house as we are just in the design phase.We do however do some phases of the work ourselves, which helps cut down on costs.

Only Homepath properties designated on homepath.com as being eligible for Homepath mortgage or Homepath renovation loan with the "sticker" are eligible for Homepath financing.

The boards are designed to click together.

I especially like the kitchen design.

With "modern" open designs and stainless/concrete finishes, building costs can be under $100/square foot.

But, some people seem to love it.Eric,  I don't think the 70% rule is designed to be the end all to the offer you make on a property.  

As I said, I am adding more links to Dodd Frank infoNew source tool from the CFPBhttp://www.consumerfinance.gov/eregulations/1005http://eregs.github.io/eregulations/ERegulations supposedly is designed to make the CFPB easier to navigate.

It seems to be designed and implemented by clueless people.But worst yet, I set up six custom searches.