I understand your frustration! We originally had a rural land mortgage with Farm Credit of TN - that was no problem and they were great. UNTIL we started to build and wanted a construction loan. Farm Credit was not interested despite their ads for land/construction loans! Maybe because we were honest with them that we intended to do a significant part of the construction ourselves.
So we went with a local bank (recommendation of builder) for an interest-only construction loan. They insisted on also having the land (180 ac) included. So now we're having trouble converting the construction loan to a regular mortgage, because the bank wants to be 100% certain that the house is 100% complete (so they could immediately liquidate it if we defaulted, I presume).
No other lender we have found will touch anything involving a house that is not 100% completed. But Farm Credit will do a new mortgage on just the land if we survey out the house/site. So our hope was to do that and just pay off the constuction loan outright. But Farm Credit's appraiser now says that the price of "recreational" land in the area is way down, and the appraised land value is not enough to cover the construction loan! We are stuck! Just gotta get the house construction totally, 100% complete.
So we went with a local bank (recommendation of builder) for an interest-only construction loan. They insisted on also having the land (180 ac) included. So now we're having trouble converting the construction loan to a regular mortgage, because the bank wants to be 100% certain that the house is 100% complete (so they could immediately liquidate it if we defaulted, I presume).
No other lender we have found will touch anything involving a house that is not 100% completed. But Farm Credit will do a new mortgage on just the land if we survey out the house/site. So our hope was to do that and just pay off the constuction loan outright. But Farm Credit's appraiser now says that the price of "recreational" land in the area is way down, and the appraised land value is not enough to cover the construction loan! We are stuck! Just gotta get the house construction totally, 100% complete.