What is the Certificate of Eligibility
on a VA Loan

The certificate of eligibility only tells us that you and I are eligible to use our VA loan. You still have to get pre-qualified.

There are a couple of ways to get this form. Number one, you can request it from your e-Benefits portal, or number two, your mortgage lender, who is directly endorsed by the Department of Veterans Affairs can also get this form for you.

When you get the form, you'll notice it says this veteran's basic entitlement is $36,000 and what happens to many of us is as we get this form and we go, $36,000, I can't buy anything for that in St. George Hurricane, or anywhere else in Southern Utah. Now what you need to know is, is that is not your minimum loan amount. The reality is, is that every single veteran is eligible for about $484,350 worth of a VA loan to use, but you still have to get pre-qualified.

Here's what you need to know. $36,000 is your basic entitlement. If you took that number, you multiplied it by four, that would mean that you would be able to get a VA loan for $144,000. Now if you're thinking, $144,000, that's really not that much. Well, you're absolutely right, which is exactly why the Department of Veterans Affairs created something called bonus entitlement.

Now, bonus entitlement is an additional $85,000, hang in here with me, $85,087.50, so the reason that they give us veterans additional bonus entitlement is because historically, real estate values have always done what? Gone up, right? So here's the deal. If you take the $36,000 and then you take the $85,087.50, and you put those together or you add those together, you come up with $121,087.50.

Now watch this. $121,087.50 times four equals $484,350, which is the maximum amount that you as a veteran can obtain with a VA loan, in most counties across the nation, with no money down. Simply stated, the VA will only guarantee 25% of the VA loan amount on any loan.