What are the Documents Needed for a VA Loan Application?

What are the documents required for a VA loan application? My name is Evan Kaufman, your VA loan originator, here to help explain.

So, for VA loans, there’s only two things you have to consider here. Number one is your eligibility for a VA loan, and then number two is your qualification.

To better understand what documents you’re going to need for a VA loan, first we have to look at eligibility.

Eligibility is really the process of making sure that you are eligible to use a VA loan, not that you’re going to necessarily close with one.

But just knowing that the VA – because remember the loan isn’t funded by the VA, but they give a guarantee to lenders – but to know that the VA is going to guarantee your home loan purchase, you need to find out if you’re eligible.

And the key thing there that you need to get is called your Certificate of Eligibility.

We’ve got some other good videos on that, but the basics are that it’s the document, typically one, sometimes two pages, that just outlines your eligibility for a VA loan.

So, if you’re a veteran and you had served, that takes into account your DD214, all that good stuff, and issues us a nice form. It says you’re eligible.

If you’re active duty, it’s still going to say if you’re eligible or not, and if you have any active VA loans, it’s going to have those on there.

It’s going to tell us about what your VA funding fee charges are, all those good kinds of things.

If you’re a veteran, have VA disability compensation, it’s going to give us details on that as well.

But your Certificate of Eligibility is the thing you need to find out if you’re eligible to use a VA loan. So that’s eligibility, main document, your COE.

Qualification is separate from that.

And qualifying means you have the income, you have the assets, and all those good things to qualify for your loan payment.

That’s where us as a lender all of a sudden starts evaluating you and the risk profile to see can you qualify for the payments.

So that’s where all of a sudden, we’re checking your income, we’re needing to check your credit to make sure there’s no issues, and the score is in good shape.

We’re going to check your assets and liabilities to make sure everything’s in order.

And the main thing we’re going to be calculating there is your debt-to-income ratio.

That’s why we’re taking your total monthly debts and dividing them into your income to make sure that this new housing payment you’re getting isn’t ideally too much of a burden.

Now, I always like to caveat and say, not that it’s too much of a burden because that’s more subjective, it’s that it’s too much of a burden based on the guidelines and the requirements that we have.

Because sometimes folks can qualify for a payment that is a lot higher than I would say they really should be qualifying for. So that’s a little subjective.

So, sometimes, remember this, if you’re getting qualified for a loan and all of a sudden, we’re telling you, ‘Hey Johnny, you can afford that $700,000 home’ – that might not mean that you actually need to get a $700,000 home with a payment that could be really high and not worth it.

Maybe you need to stick down closer to three, four hundred thousand or something like that.

The key there is just to know the eligibility and qualification are separate for the VA loan application.

To know if you’re eligible, it’s that Certificate of Eligibility.

To know for your qualifications, that’s where we’re going to need to see your income statements like your W-2s, your most recent pay stubs, leases for our active-duty folks, if you have any VA disability compensation, past history, some of those items.

And then your assets, knowing if you’re going to bring down payments or need any cash to close, you’re showing us bank statements and stuff.

So hopefully that helps give you a good idea of what you’re going to need for your VA loan application. My name is Evan Kaufman. Hope this helped you go out there win home with a VA loan. Take care.