If you are a first time home buyer you can also take advantage of the mortgage plus improvements product. This has various different names depending on the lender.  Basically what it allows you to do is  have a mortgage and then use a value of 10% of the purchase price in order to do renovations to a property.

So for example,  you purchase a property for $300,000 your mortgage on the property is going to be $240,000  but the bank is going to give you 10% of the purchase price which is $30,000 to do improvements on the property. The funds for improvements are usually held by the lawyer until the bank sends an appraiser to your property to ensure the renovations have been completed.. Once they have been completed the lawyer releases the funds to you.

The final mortgage amount that you get would be for $270,000 which is the mortgage plus the money that you used for improvements.