Suffolk, Virginia. An old single-family on one acre, bought in 2025 for $100,100 and owned free and clear. The operator's fifth project in two years. This one needed everything.
The Operator
He works the Hampton Roads corridor one house at a time. Four exits in the last two years, every one of them on the county record, every one sold to an ordinary buyer at an ordinary closing. That matters more to us than any number on a credit report. We pulled the deeds ourselves and matched them to the settlement statement on the most recent sale before we priced anything.
He found us the way a lot of rural operators do: a search for a lender that would actually look at a house outside the city limits. Most will not. We do, and we look harder, because the comp pool is thinner and the exit takes longer.
The House
A pre-war single-family on a one-acre lot, well under 1,000 square feet as it stood, bought in April 2025 for $100,100 with no mortgage on it. The scope is a full gut: roof, floor joists, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, windows, and a new kitchen, with the interior reworked to two bedrooms and two baths. Twenty-three priced line items totaling $112,600.
We set the after-repair value at $240,000. His own number was higher. Ours came from the closed sales within a few miles of the house, adjusted for size and bedroom count, and it is the number every loan figure below is built on. When the borrower's value and ours differ, we lend on ours and tell him why.
The Structure
He did not need a purchase loan. He needed the renovation funded without pulling cash off his other projects. So the loan is a first lien against the house he already owns, sized to the work.
$110,000 total. $50,000 released at closing to get the crew started and materials ordered. $60,000 held back and released in draws as the work goes in, on the same video-walkthrough draw process every HCF rehab loan runs on. Six-month term, interest only. The loan sits at 46% of the $240,000 after-repair value, and the house's own equity covered what a purchase loan would have called a down payment.
Total lender fees were $4,295: three points on the loan plus a $995 document preparation fee. No prepayment penalty. If the house sells in month four, the loan is paid off in month four.
The Timeline
First call on a Tuesday. He had his bank statements, scope, comps, and entity documents in the portal within two days, which is the single biggest thing a borrower can do to move a file. We spent the next week verifying the track record against county records, rebuilding the scope so every line carried a real price, and settling on the value. Term sheet on day nine.
From there it was title, a vacant-property builder's risk policy with us named as mortgagee, and the closing package. The wire went out on day 22.
What Got This Loan Approved
Two things, and neither was a credit score. The first was the equity: a paid-off house is the cleanest collateral there is, and at 46% of after-repair value the loan never gets close to the house's worth. The second was the record: four deeds and a settlement statement that said he finishes what he starts and sells it to real buyers.
Put those two together and the rest of the file is paperwork. That is what we mean when we say the equity was the down payment and the deeds were the approval. If you own a property outright and have a renovation to fund, call us at 804-208-0465 or use the Discuss My Deal form. We will tell you what the equity supports and what the draw schedule looks like, usually within a day.