VA Loans - Best way to leverage

[Hans Schubert]

Hello Bigger Pockets Fam

I'm interested if there are any military veteran investors out there who have found creative ways to leverage the VA loan. I understand house-hacking is basically a necessity due to the 'Primary Residence" requirement but I'm interested in any creative strategies used to house hack or short-term rent a property with a VA loan. I understand it is also possible to have more than one property on a VA loan at a time.

[Marshall Leipprandt]

@Hans Schubert You're correct in that a VA loan requires the property to be your primary residence. Since you already understand the house-hacking strategy of potentially buying a single-family home and renting bedrooms out to roommates (which I highly recommend), you could also look at multi-family properties. A multi-family property (1-4 unit) would allow you to live in one of the units and potentially use the others as short-term rentals if legal in your area.

In terms of how many properties you can have under VA loans at once, it is also true that you may have more than one. This primarily will come down to your remaining entitlement as deemed by the VA after you use your first VA entitlement. If you have an experienced VA lender, they should be able to provide a bit more detail on how this works and the feasibility of using your VA loan more than once.