A Success Story & One Thing You Might Not Know

Maximizing VA Loan Benefits: Leveraging a VA Loan for More

Transcript

Ryan Hillard: Let’s Talk About a Win We Just Had in This Market for a VA Client. Now, as a lot of people know, interest rates have moved up, so it’s kept a lot of people on the sidelines. But I’m here to tell you that people are still buying homes, and it’s still actually a really great time to buy a house, especially when you can negotiate a little bit more with the seller in order to potentially get some concessions and see how we can use those. 

Ryan Hillard: In this case, we had a VA client and the VA loan already has 100% financing with no mortgage insurance and will typically have a lower rate than conventional or other loans, which really just makes it the best loan out there, in my opinion. This client had a middle-of-the-road “risk profile,” meaning it was a very “doable” loan, but it wasn’t right down the middle, so there were a couple of things we had to navigate, but we were definitely able to do so. With the help of an experienced agent, we were able to look at the right properties to get the maximum amount of concessions. 

How do we use those concessions?

1. Pay off all the closing costs, so we didn’t have to come out of pocket for anything in terms of closing costs. 
2. Buy down the interest rate further than it already was
3. Prepay 12 months of HOA fees, which is the maximum allowed for a VA loan
4. Used seller’s concessions to pay off the borrower’s debt

Ryan Hillard: One of the things a lot of people don’t know that you can do with a VA loan is to use seller concessions to pay off the borrower’s debt. In this case, we were able to use additional concessions to pay off three credit cards. It really seemed like the borrower was making money on this. Not only did they get all of the earnest money back, they also prepaid 12 months of their HOA fees and paid off three different cards. 
Ryan Hillard: This was really a great win for this client, and it’s also just an example of the types of wins that can be had in this market right now!