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4 Steps To A VA Loan

31 August 2016 by Albane Francois

A VA loan is something that is available to anyone who is currently serving in the military, has retired from the military or even to a widowed spouse of someone who was in the military. This provides military families with the opportunity to purchase a home without having to put a down payment and without having to worry about extremely high-interest rates. If you are interested in applying for a VA loan, here are four steps you must go through: 

1. Get Prequalified: The first thing you want to do is get prequalified for the loan. When you are prequalified, you are able to determine whether or not you are actually eligible for a VA loan. You can get prequalified with a simple phone call to a lender who will ask for your basic information. This will then allow them to give you a rough estimate of what mortgage loan can be offered to you. 
2. Get Preapproved: Once you are prequalified, you should get preapproved. This is when all of your information is going to be verified. This is important to ensuring that you truly can get the type of VA loan that your lender has prequalified you for. Once you are preapproved, you will have an idea of what your budget is like for a home and a home seller will be able to take you seriously when you have an interest in their home. 
3. Get an Appraisal: When you utilize a VA loan, you need to have an appraisal of the home done before you go ahead with the purchase. This is because VA loans have certain requirements that need to be met. If these requirements are not met, repairs will either need to be made or you will not be able to be approved for the home under a VA loan. The benefit of an appraisal is that, in some cases, the appraisal will show that the house is worth less than what the seller is selling it for. You can use this to make negotiations on the price. 
4. Close: The last step is to close on the home purchase. It's important that you do not accumulate more debt before this time or change your income if you can help it. This can affect your ability to be finalized for approval on the loan. 

When you go through these four steps, getting a VA loan should be a simple task that you can easily take advantage of to get yourself into your own home. 

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