Here is my situation. In January of this year I purchased a new primary residence. When I bought the property I was planning on holding some cash back to do improvements however I ended up needing to add those funds to the down payment to avoid a "jumbo loan" at a higher rate. So now I am looking into doing a HELOC to free up some of that equity for our improvements. The problem that I'm running into is that there are several buildings on the property that were included in the sale price and appraisal (it is a 10 acre rural property). There is a separate house on the front acre that is occupied by renters, a 1700 sf workshop, a 1800 sf professional recording studio and of course the primary house. All of this was taken into account on the appraisal but now that I am looking at a home equity, the first lender I checked with said they would only count the primary home in the valuation which does not leave me enough equity for the loan. Are there any lenders that would loan on the appraisal that was made earlier this year when the property was purchased? I have another investment property with about $100k equity in it but I would really like to keep them separate. Thoughts?