I'll throw out our personal experience. We have a five-year balloon lot loan that comes due at the end of the year. The mortgage company wants the balloon off the books, period. They are not willing to do anything to extend the terms. And we put 20 percent down on a reasonably priced, well-located lot five years ago. We are refinancing with this bank, but only because the two places we found that would do a refinance wanted to charge us 8 percent plus.
The worst part may be that our lot appraised at 30 percent below its late 2003 value. :shock: We may have to bring cash to our own refinance! But it also means that those other two banks probably would not be willing to work with us at all. Our only mistake in this is going into the purchase thinking that we would want to sell or build within five years. We don't care about whatever current value they come up with; we are end users & we want to hang onto the property. We are the types of people the banks should want to work with, but no dice. I just think there is room for things to still get uglier before it gets better -- not because of a lack of inherent value along 30-A, but because the lending climate is so horrendous and nobody knows what will happen next.
