I'm lost in the trees and need some help seeing the forest.
Our applicant has a 2016 loan which was to purchase raw land. The loan is from the seller and the tax card shows there is a recorded lien. After that applicant used cash and credit cards to build his residence. He now applied with us to payoff the seller lien, credit cards, and recoup the construction costs.
We denied the application so I don't have title work or a copy of the recorded seller deed. Should I assume it included improvements to the property so the private loan would have been dwelling secured and treat our application as a refinance? Or should I assume it was land only, and therefore our application was not a refinance? If so, then funds were only used to recoup costs, so I'd report as Other, right?