Buying A Home
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VA Home loan

I qualify for it but I dont understand how it works. Can someone please 'dumb it down' for me? DH and I are hoping to get a house by the time January/February comes along. All I know about the loan is your credit cannot be lower than 620.
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Re: VA Home loan

  • What in particular don't you understand?

    The biggest perk is that with the VA, you put down $0. 

    With a conventional loan, you typically have to put down 20% of the purchase price.  If you put down less than 20%, you pay a monthly fee, called Private Mortgage Insurance, that protects the bank in case you default.  (Because you look risky to a bank bc you couldn't come up with the full 20%.)  There's no PMI on a VA loan.

  • The part where you have a guarantee amount of a certain amount but you can get up to (I think) 140,000 but its only a certain %?
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  • I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and we've used VAs 4 times and for more money than that.  Did you see that online somewhere?  If you give me the link, maybe I can figure it out from context.
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  • Ah, this is what you're talking about?

    VA will guarantee 25 percent of the principal loan amount, up to the maximum guaranty. The maximum guaranty varies depending upon the location of the property. 

    The short answer is that that info is really for the lender and doesn't matter to you, the borrower, one iota. That paragraph tells the bank that they promise to pay back no more than 25% of the loan if you default.  The VA is guaranteeing the bank 25% of the purchase price, just as if you had put down a 20% down payment.  (The table outlines that they'll pay back a greater percentage if the loan is cheaper.)

    That whole mess there in the middle of the page has nothing to do with the actual loan amount that you, the home buyer, will receive or qualify for.

    I'm always amazed at the lousy job the government does explaining VA, GI Bill and Tricare benefits to recipients.  Stuff is never as complex as they make it out to be, they just can't spit it out in English. 

  • Thank you and I completely agree that they should educate at least out processing soldiers better. I had maybe a 5 min meeting with someone in ACAP and she said theses are the civi jobs your title transfers to and these are the benefits you can receive if you choose to use them lol. But thanks a ton.
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  • I am closing using a VA home loan in a couple of weeks and have learned a lot about it. If you have any questions throughout the process, feel free to let me know. I found out sometimes you have to get the information for yourself. For example, I found out on my own that if you are 10% or more disabled and draw benefits for this, you don't have to pay the funding fee. That saved us about 8 grand right there that we were going to have to pay.
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