3 VA LOAN MISTAKES TO AVOID
The top three VA loan mistakes that we see veterans make, and most importantly, how to avoid them.
So oftentimes we see that a Southern Utah veteran will get under contract. They get ready to buy a house in St. George Utah, or any of the other surrounding areas and do not have a copy of their DD214. This is your discharge paperwork. And the reason why that form is so important is that on every single VA loan, it's required by the Veteran Affairs. It's always required on every single VA loan. But if you don't have it, they'll have to go to archives.gov and request a copy of it there, which could take two weeks, three weeks, or even a month to get, and could possibly make your close of escrow delayed and costs you money. We want to avoid that mistake. So make sure that you get a copy of your DD214 upfront and deliver that to your mortgage lender.
Second, your certificate of eligibility. A lot of veterans don't know how to get this form. There's a couple of ways to get it. They can request it from their mortgage lender, or they can get it from the benefits website or they can even get it from va.gov but we recommend that you have it up front, because in the event that a veteran may have had a VA loan in the past or maybe has one right now, it's very important for the lender to be able to do that calculation of the remaining entitlement, which may have an impact on your ability to qualify for your VA loan. So I've seen it happen before and we always want to be safe rather than sorry. Make sure that you have a certificate of eligibility upfront. If you have more questions contact us directly on what that form is and how it works.
Third and final mistake, and how to avoid it is that we see a lot of veterans will go to the real estate agent first to go out and start looking for homes. We don't want you to do that. What you should first is get with a mortgage originator who specializes in VA loans so they can give you a list, number one, of all of the required documentation that you're going to need. And number two, get's you pre-qualified/preapproved for your upcoming home purchase.
When you go out to purchase a new Southern Utah home, you will have the peace of knowing that you have been pre-qualified/pre-approved and you're ready to go out there and make it happen.