How to get a VA Home Loan Guarantee
A VA Home Loan Guarantee is basically a promise from the Government to a lender saying that in case the veteran who borrows money to buy a house can’t pay the mortgage that the VA will pay a portion of the loan back to the lender. This promise makes it much easier for veterans to get loans to purchase homes.
There are certain steps you must take in order to get a VA Home Loan Guarantee. These steps include:
- Get a Certificate of eligibility. You must prove your eligibility in order to use the VA Home Loan Guarantee Program. The simplest way to get a Certificate of Eligibility is to go to your local VA approved lender and they will submit your service information electronically and you should have your Certificate of Eligibility within minutes.
- Submit a loan package to your lender. Once you have chosen a VA approved lender they will ask you for information like proof of income, your monthly expenses, any credit card or other debt, and more. All of this personal information is used in order to verify how much you can afford to pay as a monthly mortgage payment amount depending on your income to debt ratio.
- Once the lender has all of the information they need you will be told if you are approved for a home loan and for what amount.
- Now that you know how much you can get a loan to purchase a home for you can begin looking for homes in your price range.
- Once you have found a home that you want to buy you make the seller an offer and negotiate a sales contract.
- You submit the completed sales contract to your VA approved lender who then does all due diligence on your loan. This includes the appraisal to make sure the value of the home is worth as much as or more than the loan amount, the home inspection to make sure nothing is wrong with the property, the title search to make sure there are no liens that will not be satisfied once you purchase the home, and all underwriting of the mortgage loan itself.
- Once the lender is satisfied with all of the information they need on the property you want to purchase, a closing date will be set.
- The closing of the loan is the day that the title of the property is transferred to the buyer and all of the mortgage loan paperwork is signed.
After the long process of paperwork, house hunting, price negotiating, and much more paperwork you finally own your new home and are free to move in. Head back to the MyLoanStation index.