Refinancing VA loan for Property Rental

[Tom Reynolds]

Hello everyone,

First post here. My wife and I are planning on moving across the country and have decided to keep our current home and turn it into a rental. The problem is that it is currently a VA loan, and we are unable to rent it under VA loan rules. We tried to refinance once before and were told that we had to stay in the home for at least one year or the loan could be terminated. What is our best course of action here? We have never owned any real estate other than our current home and are jumping in and trying to learn what we can about real estate investing. Thanks for any help!

Tom R.  

[Tom Reynolds]

I think that was one of my biggest worries as I had heard from somebody that you couldn't rent it out while using the VA loan, so thanks for the assurance. I didn't realize that there was a certain amount of entitlement that I had, so I'll have to look further into that. We bought our home for $75k in 2016, so we should have a decent amount that we could still use to purchase. We are planning on moving to southern Oregon and the housing prices are quite a bit less than they are in the Portland area. I will definitely take your advice and speak with a lender.