I think it depends on where you are located. I am in NC..I had a hard time finding a lender for homeowner as well. Finally, I found Carolina Farm Credit. Good Luck to you.

I am in Tulsa & just got one. Had good credit & had all regular loan type documents. It was a local bank.

Wells Fargo actually laughed at me. I was also scoffed at by Bank of America, Washington Mutual, and a few others. I, too, had success with a local bank. They did my construction (OB, and we are small business owners) loan, and also my refi, giving me a .75% credit on points when we did (so I'm paying 1.5 points instead of 2.25). When we did our construction loan, the bank accepted letters explaining both our business finances as well as our qualifications to build a home even though we had not done so before. No big bank would do that. The decisions are made on a local level, so the people that know me are the ones in charge.

We got ours through Central Bank. I'm in KY but I'm pretty sure they have banks in other states.

The only other place that would give us the construction loan was a small local bank way out in the boonies. They had great terms but were too far from us.

Harris Bank in Chicago. We previously did mortgages with them and were very happy with their service.
Citibank primly said "we are not doing construction loans at this time."

Here is a link that might be useful: My home construction blog

You will have to go local. Funny thing,, Wells Fargo gave us the most grief but at closing the permanent financing they were more the willing to pick up our mortgage.
Go figure.
We used a local bank. They were more than happy and after I submitted the first 2 draws, things went like clockwork.

Keep up the faith