Underwriting Hell

I've been trying to refinance my Cheektowaga rehab since November. My latest loan application has been in underwriting for a month. The loan to value ratio of this house is really low and during past years would have been approved in days. Though the Fed is pumping money into the economy and interest rates are low the underwriters are being much more cautious about lending to investors. I expect this is due to all the investors that bought houses on speculation and then defaulted. I don't have any data, but I suspect that a lot of current foreclosure "crisis" is related to people that though they could make easy money by purchasing houses and flipping them quickly - assuming that the prices were going to go up forever.

So this year I have not even been looking at properties. This is unfortunate since I think that the current market is good for buyers. But flipping is too risky in this market and the only money available to me is hard money which is too expensive for a buy and lease strategy.