Ive read a few articles now suggesting that the VA loan process is a pita and vets frequently lose out on homes because the VA was taking forever.  I wanted to know what recent experiences vets have had with home loans in current, sellers markets?  Anybody have any helpful info to share?

I heard similar about some first time home buyers loan offered from select banks.

As it was explained to me, in a hyper competitive market why would any seller jump through additional hoops if they have a similar offer with less ambiguity and risk?

I've seen it from both sides, multiple times.    Any home loan is a royal PITA.  However, VA loans are the worst.

Unless my home was 100% new and perfect in every way, I would accept an offer from any source, before accepting offer from a buyer using a VA loan.

They have extra requirements even beyond what is required for code.    They treat the loan applicant (the buyer) like a complete idiot.

It's not a good deal at all, unless you are disabled and have the fees waived.

Exactly. I bought a home once using the VA guarantee. On my home I just bought I went conventional instead. Wouldn’t have made any difference on interest rate and the funding fees were higher.

I bought both my homes with VA loans with no issues.... BUT, one was next to a Military base, and the other was a brand new home in a conservative state at the bottom of the market.

The advantage to me was no money down, or any of that "PMI" type garbage.

I close on a house next Friday.  This is the first time I've ever bought a home and is the only time I've used the VA benefit.

It was a pretty straight forward process for me.  My wife and I went through Navy Federal for the mortgage because they seemed to have the better rates.  They handled getting confirmation of my VA benefits, and then gave us the pre-qualification letter to go shopping with.  Once we selected the home the only additional thing that we had to do was have a VA appraiser come out but Navy Federal scheduled that.  It didn't seem to be a hindrance on us getting the house.  Every ran smoothly for us, well assuming the closing goes well next friday

I got better deal going thru local bank in small town, the VA could do, i suggest you shop around.

We refinanced our VA loan a few years ago.  Took over 3 months to get a VA approved appraiser. The bank paid the additional fees but was still a PITA. The VA says it was because the I-5 corridor is the hottest real estate market in the country but homes all around us were changing hands in 30 days and less.

I bought a house last year using my VA loan. the house was in great shape, and we had no issues. the only thing we had to do to the house, the VA required, was  a hand railing be put on some outside steps. I helped the home owner install it.

IIRC the longest delay we had was the appraisal, which took about three weeks to get ordered, done, and reported to us.  we started buying the house around the middle of january, and moved in the first of march.

you wont be buying a dumpy fixer upper / a house with a lot of issues with a VA loan however. they would require you to rebuild the house before you would get the loan approved.

VA loans basically treat the home buyer like a child who has no life experience.

yeah, you need to get a new roof before we sign off, oh, that plumbing is not good enough, fix that first, etc. from what I understand, its the result of people buying houses with big problems that they ignored, then they later made a stink about the " VA" selling them a shitty house / not protecting them from a shitty roof / foundation, etc. that they cant afford to fix. so, the va wont sign off on a house unless its in perfect condition, and should go 20 years before it needs anything major.

My son just closed on his VA loan.  From the time he found the house after pre-approval to closing, about 6 weeks.  He had a student loan to pay off, so he had about two weeks in addition that could’ve been cut off

Thanks guys.  Ya I've seen a lot of non mil friends buy houses lately with nothing down and better rates than what I've been seeing from VA approved lenders.  Only real benefit I'm seeing is no PMI.

This is some interesting food for thought

CAn get loans without PMI, jus sit down with lender and go over options, my situation was unique.  I went with 5/1 arm , no pmi, 3% , 10% down and i pay my own ins & taxes (dont have to worry if someone else paying it )

Plan to pay off after the 5 years, but this was the cheapest way for me to get into the house, esp in amother state.

I'd never considered an ARM.  Interesting.  I think I'd rather do PMI tham wait to have 10% down.

I know it costs more but I'm just tired of renting and wanna own.

I bought my first place in 2016 using the VA home loan and it was super easy.

Granted I bought a place in the 170k range, it was only 11 years old and it's a townhouse but I was honestly shocked how easy it was.

My brother's good friend was my realtor and his other friend was the lender "guy" and I had a good credit score which I'm sure helped.

Paid around $2500 in closing costs, and money to secure the property. Got 3.375 interest for 30 years fixed.

I do RE now here.  VA loans are not the preferred loan for sellers who are in a hurry to close.  VA appraisers are allowed to take 21 days to get the appraisal report in.  My job to inform my sellers of that if they happen to be considering multiple offers.  Nonetheless, this year is not a sellers' market, so it has not been that much of a factor this year as it was in prior two years.  Plus, VA has some smaller additional requirements that other loans don't have for loans in my area (involving water tests, IIRC)

So I can imagine in a competitive market with multiple offers coming in on a home, someone might be better off accepting an offer from a conventional loan buyer, all other things being equal.