🏗️ Daily Mortgage Rates LIVE – 11/26/2025 – One-Time Close Construction Loans

 Building your dream home just got easier! Today on Daily Mortgage Rates LIVE, we break down One-Time Close Construction Loans—financing that rolls your land purchase, construction costs, and permanent mortgage into one application and one closing. Learn how staged builder draws work, how the loan converts to a permanent mortgage, and key requirements like credit, down payments (0% VA/USDA, 3.5% FHA), and typical terms. We also cover today’s rates, choosing a qualified builder, and creating a solid construction plan. It’s a smart option for anyone wanting a smoother construction process. 

 🎥 Watch the full episode: 👉 https://themortgagecalculator.com/Page/Daily-Mortgage-Rates-LIVE-Video-Podcas 

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Using The Mortgage Calculator proprietary technology, borrowers can instantly price and quote thousands of mortgage loan programs in just a few clicks. The Mortgage Calculator technology also enables borrowers to instantly complete a full loan application and upload documents to our AI powered software to get qualified in just minutes!

Our team of licensed Mortgage Loan Originators can assist our customers with Conventional, FHA, VA and USDA mortgages as well as access thousands of mortgage programs using Alternative Income Documentation such as Bank Statement Mortgages...

Transcript

Today, we'll be going over one time close construction loans which allow our borrowers to purchase a lot, and finance the construction of a brand new home from the ground up with the end loan being the one time so they don't need to refinance after the construction is finished. So we'll go over a few different examples here.

Definitely very definitely a challenging loan but we love to do those. So we are live on all the different platforms. So let me go ahead and get for today. So if you'd like a full breakdown, a full loan estimate with all the itemized fees, please get with one of our team members. We have over 400 in over three states.

We'd be happy to help you out if we are able to. You can even drop a comment here or just go to our website. Let me go ahead and switch my screen, and we'll get into today's live rates. So first off, we always wanna look at the ten year treasury that gives us a good idea overall for rates. Let's see if I can move myself a little bit.

Sorry. This gives us the best overall for all the different rate programs. So we can see in general in the last five days, we've definitely had some good news. The markets are looking in our favor here as the rates are coming down. And this morning, slightly higher, but, we're leveling out here.

And even, yesterday, we're just below four. So definitely a good sign for rates. And as I always wanna put it to perspective, we are still at one year lows. And now let's get into our actual live rates for today. I'll go ahead and refresh this, so we have the live rates very moment.

And we always wanna make sure we compare a scenario we compare across all our different loan programs as we do a range of different programs. We set a single family home, a 500,000 purchase, 300,000 loan amount that corresponds to 60% loan to value, a seven sixty estimated FICO score, 40% estimated debt to income ratio. Compare all the programs side to side. And first off, we have a conventional option here. It's what most people think of when they think of a mortgage.

Rates today for a home come in at 5.625 and finally PR coming in at 5.3. And if we switch over to FHA is always a great option if our borrower buy for conventional allows a little more leniency on credit issues and a higher overall debt to income ratio. And rates today point one two five, final APR 5.995. And you see there that's just a touch higher than our conventional. That's typically because of the extra fees that are included for FHA, the upfront and yearly mortgage insurance that is required.

So always compare that final APR. And for VA eligible vets, active service members, and surviving spouses, these are amazing programs. Rates today come in for it for VA 5.25. And the final APR comes in at 5.7. So when you compare side by side to FHA, even though the rate might appear lower, notice the APR is lower because there are lower fees there for our veteran.

And the final standard government option here, USDA. Those are for properties that are in the USDA eligible areas of the country and borrowers that are eligible and the properties that are eligible, those are pretty amazing programs. Today coming in at 5%, final APR 5.698. We can compare that to an FHA option or a conventional option if our borrower is shopping in those USDA areas. So notice USDA is just a touch cheaper than both.

So definitely a good option looking in those rural areas of the country. And, some of the programs that we love to work on that are very unique are non QM alt doc options is where we start to be able other types of income such as bank statements, ten ninety nines, b and l statements, etcetera. Great for our self employed borrowers to use for a primary home. So if our borrower, perhaps a buy for conventional using standard documentation, we can switch to our non QM alt doc for a primary home. Rates come in today 5.875.

Finally, PR 6.145. So just a touch higher than conventional, which is typical. The other day, we were almost identical, which was pretty amazing. But with the recent drop in rates, these rates today are coming in pretty smoking. And to use our non QML doc programs for an investment property, rates today come in at 66%, final APR 6.321, which will compare to our conventional property.

Same rate, 6%, final APR 6.311. So notice conventional is a touch cheaper, but a lot of our self employed borrowers love to use our altog. And another program we love is our DSCR, stands for Debt Service Coverage Ratio, no income or employment needed. We simply use the estimated rents from a rental property, investment property, a DSCR ratio. The estimated rents can cover the expenses, the PITIA IA of the mortgage, that is a ratio over one, which is what we use for these exam and this first one has a three year prepayment penalty, which is standard for these programs.

Rates for that option come in today 5.999. Final APR is 6.307. Pretty conventional when we add that little three year prepayment penalty. And we can sweep the deal even more. We can add a five year prepayment penalty to some options and rates for those since come in today twenty seven five, final APR 6.169, which beats conventional by quite a bit, which is pretty amazing.

And there's always an option for no prepayment penalty for our states that do not or investors that choose not to have it. Rates today coming in with no prepayment penalty, same as conventional 6% rate. Finally, PR is 6.321, so just a touch of expensive on the cost there. And we have many other options, but, we won't get into those. If you need a full breakdown, please go to our website or loan officers.

But today, I want to go into our topic for today, which is going to be our one time closed loan. So let's pull up an example here real quick. I had our AI create a visualization for you. So you can see here, this objective, it's a little bit hard to see, when I pull up the listing here, you'll see why I use this graphic. But what our objective here with a one time closed loan is to buy an empty lot of land and build something that looks like this, a brand new beautiful home.

So this is a sample rendering of what we might be able to do in this scenario. So if we wanna build that home, first, we need to identify a lot. So that's what I was doing on Zillow, went into just my general area, found the first lot that pulled up. So this empty lot in an otherwise residential neighborhood, obviously, should have, entitlements and everything we need to start our build And simply need to the scenario where we're going to purchase this exact lot is what I put in all my different examples here. And we're gonna purchase it for I used 400,000, but, you can see there's $3.98.

But for simplicity's sake, I set it to 400,000. And to make that beautiful home, I just put in the rendering. We're going to assume a $400,000 budget. Hopefully, that's enough. Obviously, we need to talk to our contractor, our engineer, our architect, get the plans ready, but we're gonna assume our borrower has plans for a $400,000 in order to build what we had just presented.

And if we have that altogether and some basic info for our borrower, just the basic profile we want in the demo scenario, we can get an actual quote here. So our first option is going to be our Fannie Mae, our conventional one time close for a primary home. This option has an eleven month build time, so you must complete the build within eleven months. So that's why our borrowers need to be ready. Our developers, our contractors need to be ready and approved.

And, this option has a maximum LTV of 95. So 5% down is the option we chose here. You see here I broke down, some of the info on the scenario and most importantly, the lot we're gonna assume we're purchasing for 400,000. We're going to use a $400,000 build budget and that's gonna be a total cost of 800,000. So we need to make sure when we have our appraisal that the estimated final build when it's completed is going to be 800,000.

I don't have a typo there. So the contractor plans must be approved. There's going to be inspections at multiple draw periods. Pretty much the standard scenario, but your loan officer can come you out with that. So let's go ahead and check out the rate options here.

So a couple different options for a primary home. This is pretty amazing to be able to purchase a empty lot, build your own dream home, and rates today are not that much different from your standard rates. 6.749, the lowest rate option we can at this time, 2.25 discount points in cost. And the lowest cost option, 7.375 rate coming in at point eight seven five discount points in cost, which is pretty amazing. And again, this option assumes an $800,000 final purchase price, AKA final budget, that required a $40,000 down payment from a borrower.

Loan amount is going to be $7.60. And, just some basic breakdown on the scenario. You see we used a FICO score of 740 there. Now, unique option about this is technically, Fannie, Magna, and Doug. The conventional options do allow for a one time close for a second and property as well.

So I was able to get scenarios for those. So first up, we're gonna assume, this borrower is building a home in Fort Lauderdale for a second home. So the same example, the only thing that changes here, it's the same program, it's going to be 10% down required for a second home. And, everything else is the same. There is one note here.

The cost is very high, 3.25. We would need a little bit of seller credits, in order to, make sure this works. Home is typically available. That is the challenge with the second home. When we try to max it out to the maximum of 90% load to value, 10% down, the challenge is going to be passing the compliance here.

So we definitely typically will need some credits built in so that we can make sure we pass compliance or go to a lower LTV. And, for this example, though, we were able to 10% down for a second home for the same exact scenario. Now the final option technically are Fannie Mae conventional option to allow 15% down for an investment property, which is pretty amazing. And these are even more challenging to meet the compliance as well because it is higher cost, obviously, as we go up in the risk there from primary to second to investment property. So here, a little bit higher cost, nearly the same as a second home.

Conventional options are typically, they're treating second homes as pretty much investment properties as far as the cost. So you see here the same rate, 7.749 with the cost of 3.5 discount points. So we need to make sure we get a little bit of credits here as well, which allows our same budget, 800,000 total budget, and 15% down for our investors out there looking to use this option to purchase a new investment property. So those are all pretty options. Again, if you'd like a full breakdown and an actual estimate on your exact scenario, please do one with one of our loan officers, drop a comment, or go to our website.

We'll the loan officer in your area, and we'll break that all down for you. So thanks everybody for joining us today, and happy holidays and good luck out there, hopefully a lot and purchasing that to build your dream home. Thanks, everybody.