VA loans or regular loans

[GBsMom]

For all those military home buyers= Our next assignment housing is run by corporate so we will pay money to live on base. So we are talking about buying a house- we have preapproved loans and a realtors, who tell us it would be better not to use the VA loan but a regular loan with our credit, but other military tell us its a better deal to use the VA loan but we would pay $6000 in upfront cost in our loan.

I don't want to move anymore so hopefully this will be my last assignment but we will see. So any advice- which is better on a 260k by the 5 or 10% down

 

[dbarker]

I don't know the answer to your question, but my advise is to speak to an actual Mortgage Company about your loan. They will know all the ins and outs of all types of loans--VA, FHA, Conventional, etc.

 

[SplshMtn99]

I don't know either. We used a VA loan back in 1993 to get this place. I don't recall any extra fees .... or maybe I do?

I just know that we didn't have a downpayment really because we had just paid off all our debt.....the opportunity came up to buy this place for cheap...and we didn't want to loose the chance. So we used VA to back the missing deposit rather than PMI.

Good luck.

 

[kcouture]

It kind of depends on whether you are able to put the 10-20% down payment on the loan. If yes then you dont need to do the VA. Or you might be financially able to but choose to keep the cash for other, in which case the VA loan is a good alternative. Remember that if you don't put down the 15-20 % you will have to pay private lender mortgage insurance on top of the other fees which is roughly about $65 a month on a 150000 mortgage on a private non-VA loan. VA loans dont pay pmi. There are other considerations, like if you and your spouse divorce what happens to the house. The VA loan benifit is tied up on this home - then what?
Just some thoughts.

 

[Doodlebug939]

I cant completely answer your question but maybe I can send you to a website that might be able to help you figure the numbers. My auto Insurance www.usaa.com also does home loans. There are calculators on their that let you enter in info for va or conv and tells you what their fees are and an approximate of what closing costs will be.

Plus if you have not settled on a realtor or signed an agreement with on then you can go to USAA website and get referred to a realtor and after closing USAA pays you some cash back.

Where are you moving to?

Hope that this was helpful.

 

[texasthree]

I would also suggest using usaa. Its so easy and they do give you cash back when you use their realtor. I want to say we got like $500.
We have had 2 VA loans and this will be our last. Each time you take a va loan the finance charge is more. The first time it was a small amount this time when I went to sign the mortgage papers the VA funding fee was $5000. I certainly didnt have the 10% to put down so we had no choice but that fee pretty much eats up whatever help a va loan is suppose to give, atleast for us.

 

[casndan]

Texastree, we just used our VA loan benefits for the first time and the cost was 4500 I believe so I guess the rates in general have just gone up...

 

[texasthree]

I may be wrong but our mortgage company told us that each time you use a va the price goes up. I looked it up on our paper work and the first time we used the VA loan it was $1850 which was 5 years ago. This time when we used it this past August it was $5000.

 

[HeatherFeather]

When we bought our home in Texas, our VA interest rate was slightly higher than a conventional rate and we paid the funding fee. Well, since we moved to SC, our mortgage broker was able to secure the same great rate for a VA loan AND advised me to use mine (both my husband and I have VA loan eligibility) because when I separated I was rated at 10% disability. This allowed us to have the funding fee waived as well. I wish the broker in Texas would have hooked us up like this. Oh well...HTH!

 

[rparmfamily]

We also did a VA loan thru USAA and I highly recommend them. I'd give them a call and see what they tell you is best for you. I know when we were working on our loan, they were very straightforward about what was the best loan, what we needed to do to qualifty and for how much. We also used their realtor program and got cash back after closing.

Good luck!

 

[Doodlebug939]

I am just waiting for my husband to get orders out of here and then we can start looking for a home. I plan on using USAA if possible and do a VA loan. I have heard that most people dont get a VA loan with Navy FCU but rather a Veterans Advantage.

I have been working hard on getting our debt down a low as possible. Because many of you have used VA what is the % of debt that a person can have? Is it 40% with mortgage and all bills in total of the income? Any thoughts?