No Limit Loan for Vets!?!

[Shmuel Harris]

Just saw this post.

http://www.realtor.org/videos/the-voice-for-real-e...

Sounds like it is possible for the Federal Government to do away with the price limit that vets have when applying for a loan. This might change drastically how many houses a vet can buy. In podcast 163, Bill Allen mentioned that there is a cap on how much total debt a veteran can take on. Effectively, this limits how many loans a vet can take out because of the eventual cap. 

It would seem to me that if the cap was removed, wouldn't vets be able to take out an unlimited amount of vet loans after living in each property for a year.

http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/benefi...

Just figured I would put this out there to see what the BP Community has to say about that.

Might be that my presumption is Bollox though.

Sam Harris.

[Chris Mason]

Yes, of course. A realtor that knows VA is a very nice thing to have, too. Normally, your realtor and the type of financing you use really have nothing to do with each other. A realtor that does a lot of veteran deals, however, will know not to show you a home that it's going to take $5k of fixing someone else's house just to close w/ VA - unless you've had THAT particular conversation. And "that" conversation isn't necessarily a bad one to have, depending on your tolerance for risk.

VA has the lowest credit/income/asset standards paired with the best rates & no mortgage insurance, they compensate for this with the highest standards for the property of any traditional mortgage loan program.

Depending on your risk tolerance, you may want to actually be willing to spend money putting BS band aids on the home post-appraisal and after you've got your conditional loan approval. I personally have done this, and I think of it as "making up" for the fact that I don't have to make a down payment -- so the karmic balance of the universe makes up for it with check-the-box property repairs that I have to do (still WAY less than 3.5% down payment!).

- Had roof contractor dude fix part of a car port roof showing signs of wood rot, bare minimum required.

- Had handyman tear out some tile in a bathroom and replace it, as cheaply as possible. This didn't actually fix all the wood rot between the upstairs and downstairs bathroom, but it made it LOOK fixed for the VA. Fixed it for real (& spent real money) after I took ownership.

- Old sink that jutted directly out of the drywall. Tore out and patched drywall. Same as above, the real fix happened after closing, because obviously drywall wasn't the full extent of the problem, but I want to minimize how much I spend on fixing a home that I do not (yet) own.

- A lot of pest report stuff that no one would care about on any non-VA transaction.

- The important thing is that you do this AFTER you're 100% certain that this is the house you want, and that the seller doesn't have any "outs" to back out of the deal without consequences, and that any pesky underwriting conditions are signed off too (juuuust in case).