VA Mortgage Update - the 21st Century Road to Housing Act

In this episode, Jennifer talks about the new 21st Century Road to Housing Act and its impact on veterans and VA mortgages. She explains how the bill will increase awareness of VA home loan benefits, requiring lenders to ask about military service and include comparative grids in loan disclosures. Jennifer also details changes to appraisal policies and crucial updates to the HUD-VASH program, designed to assist more homeless veterans. Discover how these impactful changes will benefit the veteran community.

Transcript

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VA Mortgage Update. Today we're going to be talking about the 21st Century Road to Housing Act and how it impacts veterans and VA mortgages. So this recently just passed the House and the Senate, and at this moment, as I film this, we're just waiting for the president to sign the bill, which I assume he will. I'd be very shocked if he didn't, especially considering the overwhelming support this bill got. So let's dig into what's changing for VA mortgages. I would argue the theme around many of the changes is knowledge. That's right. Right now, the statistic that's been quoted for years is only about 26% of veterans use their VA home loan benefits. And this has been something that has befuddled the industry for decades. Well, provisions in this bill are out to make it so we increase that statistic because the VA home loan benefit truly is a benefit. So number one, all loan applications. So even if you're applying for conventional, USDA, Jumbo, whatever type of loan you're applying for, there will be the question: have you done any military service? Are you in the military? There now is a required, there will be, it hasn't hit yet, but there will be a required question, have you served in the military? Now look, we've been asking that question for years in our application, but it has not been a requirement across the industry. This changes that. And you're like, well, why is that a big deal? If I had a dollar for every time I've talked to a veteran and they have told me, oh, I have a conventional loan, and I'm like, why? And they're like, well, that's what I applied for. The lender didn't tell me about anything else. I'm like, did you tell them you were in the military? No. Did they ask if you were in the military? No. Okay, well, here's how much you could have saved. So this is designed so that lenders can educate military members or veterans about their VA benefit early on. Because if you're already close to closing, like five days before closing on a house, and you go, hey, I'm a veteran, and no one recognized it until then, that's problematic. You can't just switch like that. So this is to early identify people eligible for VA home loan benefits so that they are educated on it by the lender. Now, there's a second portion to this. I would argue this portion is probably there because they don't have faith in lenders doing the education, which is fair. In the disclosures now, there's gonna be a grid. So disclosures are what we send to you, the home buyer, or if you're refinancing once we're moving forward. There's gonna be a grid that compares VA to conventional to FHA. The math. This is huge because what we'll hear is oh, I thought conventional was cheaper, I thought FHA was better, I thought, I thought, I thought. Well, guess what? If you go through your disclosures and you see this grid, it's gonna show the math of VA versus FHA. Because if you're watching this video, you're probably fairly or very, very educated on your VA benefits. So you know VA is no down payment, no mortgage insurance, so big, lower rates than conventional. But if you don't watch these videos, you don't know that. You don't realize that VA doesn't have mortgage insurance, but FHA does. You don't realize that VA has lower rates than conventional. That's not on your what you would recognize. So this is designed to bring awareness. Okay. Now, the third thing in the bill that relates to VA loans is there's a new requirement on all government loans that they have a proper reconsideration of value policy, as well as how to handle second appraisal requests from consumers. Now, this is all in relation to appraisals. A reconsideration of value is something that we request as a lender if the value comes in lower than you're buying the house at or you think it's worth for a refinance, and you want us to dispute the value. VA already has the best policy and procedure when it comes to reconsideration of values and second appraisals. So I don't think we're gonna see any changes from them because as a lender that does all loan types, they already excel. They already excel at that. And finally, what I think is probably gonna have the biggest impact outside of educating more veterans about their VA loan benefit is they made changes to the HUD VASH program. So the HUD VASH program is designed to help homeless veterans. Prior, in order to qualify for the HUD VASH program, you they would use your VA disability income as income. They now are not using it as income to qualify for that program. Apparently, the VA disability income was making it so a lot of people weren't eligible for HUD Vash, but by changing this rule, it will make it so more homeless veterans get help. So that was something I saw in the bill where I was like, oh, that's cool. Um, just to be super clear, because whenever I mention HUD Vash, I get a ton of calls about it. We don't set up HUD Vash. That's nothing to do with myself, my team. Um, HUD Vash is something you need to speak with that department of the government, it has nothing to do with mortgages, but I thought it was something that was really beneficial in that bill. So I wanted to make sure I mentioned it because look, no veterans should be homeless. We all agree on this. So knowing that there is this change to the program, if you were denied for HUD VASH before, but now, once this goes through fully and is in process, I say, right? Because it always takes the government, you know, longer than 10 minutes to change something, there's hope on the horizon for you. Okay. So overall, any huge changes to VA? No, but it is showing that the government is recognizing that not enough veterans know about their VA mortgage benefit, and this is something they want them to be aware of. I say it on this channel all the time. The VA mortgage is a true benefit. It's not something like a fake benefit where they're like, oh, we give this to you because you served and it's trash. No, it's legit a true benefit. It is the best loan program out there, bar none. So, questions, comments, if you want to get pre approved for a mortgage, if you're thinking of refinancing, remember my team can help you across the country. 786 933 2077. Thanks for watching.