VA Loan Owner Occupancy Requirements

[Jessica Skupien]

Hi BP folks, My husband is in the military and we are planning to begin our real estate investing endeavors with an owner occupied multi family unit somewhere in East bay (Bay Area, CA). Assuming, of course, that I can find a deal in this market! We're planning to use a VA loan (hence needing to owner occupy)

[Bill Gulley]

Occupancy requirements are usually set in the note, but simply state owner occupied, that definition is determined through laws dealing with mortgage fraud and intent of a borrower. Owner occupancy requirements are one year.

With all notes, the occupancy requirement is waived when unforeseen events occur such as death, divorce, economic changes or things beyond the control of a borrower that cause a hardship. VA accepts any change of duty station as a valid exception, that isn't an issue.

You'll need to show that, or it should be determinable that any event was not something that you had knowledge of. Knowing you will be changing duty stations in 6 months and taking a loan can be an issue as to your intent. They need to see that your intent was to owner occupy and not use the loan with a commercial intent.

I've not heard or seen that podcast, there are some sharp folks who may do a podcast or put information out that aren't fully informed, grazing over some finance topic may give implications that may not be completely true, finance is like that, it goes much deeper than what is generally described, even in official documents as they use terms such as "owner occupied" without going into detail. Much will be undefined and some aspects are as to what is generally accepted, what has been defined by agencies in bulletins or announcements. Not "dissing" a podcast I haven't heard, but loan compliance is a full time job, the internet isn't that best the best place to find information unless you're on an official site. :)