Andrew Vierra, VA Home Loan Specialist and Branch Manager with WealthWise Mortgage Planning and VALoansOfCalifornia.com, discusses the VA service-connected disability, its role in the VA home loan, and how your California County Veteran Service Officer can help.
When you use the VA home loan benefit, the VA charges a VA funding fee. The fee isn’t required to be paid upfront and it’s not anything that you have to write a check for. That fee is rolled up into the loan, and it’s financed. The fee itself varies based on how many times you have used the VA and how much money you put down.
If you put down no money, then the fee is 2.3% of the loan amount if you’ve never used the benefit before. But if you’re receiving VA Service Connected Disability pay, the fee is waived.
But say that you’re not receiving VA disability, and you thought that you should apply. If you contact your California County Veteran Service Officer and start your claim prior to closing on your home loan, and you end up getting your disability granted after closing on the loan, you are eligible to receive a refund for the fee that you paid. That could be quite a substantial fee!
For example, if you were going to buy a $400,000 home and put no money down, the fee is 2.3% if you haven’t used VA before. That’s $9,200 that potentially could be refunded to you after closing of escrow. Now there are a lot of different details that go into this.
So if you want more information, you can Google to find out who your CA County Veteran Service Officer is. You can reach out to me because I have the contact information and I can provide that to you. Or if you want more details on how to go about starting your claim, you can contact the VA directly at 877-827-3702
So there’s a lot of ways to get the information. But if you’ve ever thought about applying for VA service-connected disability and you’re going to use your VA home loan benefit, it’s a pretty good financial incentive to start the process.
If you want more information on this or anything else on a VA home loan, you can reach out to me. Please don’t keep us a secret. Tell your battle buddies forward this information to them and the one thing I tell people all the time:
If you’re thinking about using your VA home loan benefit, the answer is no if you don’t ask, so please, just ask!
