How Often Can You Get a VA Home Loan

By David Rouse

Veterans may obtain a Veterans Affairs (VA) guaranteed loan as long as they have eligibility. The VA provides eligibility to all honorably discharged veterans and active-duty service personnel. The VA's home loan program guarantees an entitlement up to $104,250. Most lenders will lend up to four times the amount of the entitlement. This means most lenders will allow the veteran to borrow up to $417,000. As long as a veteran has some or all of the entitlement, the lender will probably get the loan if the veteran qualifies.

The VA does not put a limit on how many loans a veteran may receive over his lifetime. A veteran may never use his benefit if he chooses; or he may choose to use it dozens of times. Some veterans use their benefit to purchase a new home, live in the home for a few years and then turn it into a rental home. They refinance the home before turning it into a rental home, which frees up their entitlement, and then they use their entitlement again to purchase another home. VA does not limit how many times a veteran may do this.

The VA offers refinancing of mortgages, as well. A veteran's current loan does not have to be a VA-guaranteed loan to qualify for a VA refinance. As long as the veteran occupies the property and has some entitlement remaining, the veteran can refinance the loan as often as she likes. Each time the veteran refinances a VA loan, the entitlement used for the previous loan is released, and most likely will be used in the new loan. If the previous loan used $50,000 of entitlement and the veteran refinanced it, the $50,000 of entitlement is released when the loan is paid off. The new loan, if it is another VA loan, then uses $50,000 of entitlement, as long as the loan amounts on the two loans matched identically.

The VA even allows a borrower to have multiple VA loans. The veteran may have one loan, which uses the entire $104,250 entitlement, or two loans, which use $52,125 of the entitlement each. If the veteran is married to another veteran, they each receive entitlements up to $104,250. They could each finance multiple homes using their individual VA home loan entitlement.

The VA charges a funding fee to homeowners who use the VA home loan benefit. It does not actually lend directly to the veterans; instead, it guarantees the loans provided by lenders. The VA uses the funding fee to fund an account, which reimburses lenders losses if a VA-guaranteed home loan defaults. First-time users pay between 1.25 percent and 2.15 percent of the loan amount to the VA for the funding fee. Veterans who use their benefit multiple times pay between 1.5 percent of 3.3 percent of the loan amount for the funding fee.

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