Separating Active Duty - Proof of Income

[Sydney Rae]

Greetings,

I am separating from Active Duty w/in 6 months. I am trying to buy a home & I have been pre-approved but the lender says that I will not be approved unless I show that I am either going to re-enlist or have a civilian job lined up for proof of income.

The problem w/ this is that I cannot show proof of civilian employment because I do not have a job lined up nor do i plan to re-enlist.

I have read online that I could provide the letter of intent to re-enlist, and just not follow through w/ it. However this may conflict w/ the Skill Bridge program that I am doing in the last 6 months of my contract which stipulates that I will be separating afterwards.

Note: Skill Bridge is a technical program that helps to transition service members into the civilian employment world by providing trainings for skills such as my program for Software Engineering. The program will set me up with a job after my 6 moths of training, but this will be too late. 

I want to avoid renting, how can I make this work?

[Chris Mason]

You never should have been preapproved, tbh.

"I have read online that I could provide the letter of intent to re-enlist, and just not follow through w/ it."

More importantly than what you note, that would be mortgage fraud, my friend. 

"I want to avoid renting, how can I make this work?"

In short, the system is working as intended. Rent, finish college, get a job, then go ahead and apply for a mortgage once you're actually settled into your career. 

The way you 'house hack' as a student on the GI Bill is that you note that the GI Bill BAH is dependent on where the school is located, not where you live. So you go to a swanky school in a swanky area, but live cheap and commute in. I'm assuming that you see no reason to be scared of a little gunfire that isn't directed specifically at you, so there's ample opportunity here that many people will not see because they're scared of the pew pew noises. Not only will the BAH offset your rent, but there will be plenty of spare change to boot. I got something like $3600k/mo in BAH to go to UC Berkeley, but was paying ballpark $1200/mo in rent in OmittedCityName.

$2400 in the green after making the housing payment is actually a lot BETTER than most traditional 'house hackers' do on year 1, and since most students are going into debt to go to school, I came out ahead relative to them too.