VA loans and a rant in general…

It’s amazing. Practically NO bank ‘knows how’ to do a VA loan. Really, they never trained for it or haven’t done it, so they just don’t out of practice. Really? VA loans are for a purpose. For people who served in the military to get a head start on financing of a house (no down payment), which they will have trouble doing usually when they are in training, overseas, or whatnot. It’s like any of the other veterans benefits.  Somehow in the last 20 or so years, it’s been ‘magically’ forgotten how to do them. But they’ll do a HUD loan, only if you qualify to certain restrictions. Hmm. Kind of funny, really considering this isn’t an URBAN area.

Cripes. Yup, the guy who was supposed to do our construction loan, who said, yup, you get a loan to tie it together at the end, no problem all the sudden when we were supposed to close tomorrow pipes up with  “I never said that, I’ve never done that before, I need $25k in cash by Wednesday”–what the he** bleep bleep. Riiight. But, he says if you can get someone to fund the ‘end’ loan (VA, HUD, etc) for 100% I’ll get the construction loan going. So we call the other guy that was slow as molasses in getting back to us (which is why we went with the other guy), oh no, since the last time he and my husband talked, BECAUSE he hadn’t done many VA loans ‘they’ took away his RIGHT to do them. Seriously? I feel bad for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, who have wives living in the barracks or unit housing waiting for them to get home and buy their dream house and then suddenly everywhere you turn ‘no one’ is doing those loans anymore.

Meanwhile the people whose land we are trying to buy are getting pissed off because we have to keep  pushing closing back (first it was hearing back from Design Homes, then it was the bank taking 2 friggin weeks to get the information to the appraiser, then it was 2 weeks for the appraiser to call us and tell us that the bank sent over crappy copies of the information and could we verify each little part over the phone)…then the appraiser took several days beyond that to get the info in, and now this. We have done everything we can to speed this up (remember in about a month, we will likely be homeless again unless we can convince our landlady to let us stay for ‘a few more weeks’ until the house is done…)

I insisted that my husband call the Wells Fargo lady in Iowa, who was HONEST and TRUSTWORTHY and I would send ANYONE I know to her, she explains everything right down to the penny, including all the ins and outs of a VA loan. At first she didn’t think she could tie up a ‘modular’ home with land loan, which for all of you that aren’t familiar means ‘stick built in factory’. The appraiser appraised it as stick built, and DH is a VA approved builder, so fingers crossed she will get back to us saying that SHE can do the VA loan, which will spur the guy here to fund the construction loan 100%. If not, the sellers will probably tank out the offer and try to sell to someone else.

I’m not letting it bother me though. Sure, it makes me angry, but I still have my husband, I still have my baby, and there’s plenty of other land out there to be had. We may have to wait for a while, but we will get it done eventually.

2 Comments

  1. Stacy Wolfmeyer

    Things just aren’t supposed to be that hard! I’m sorry that it’s just one roadblock after another for you. I’m glad to see you’re trying to focus on the positives though. They are what really matters, and it’s great that you know that. Not everyone does. I just wish things would go smoothly for once for you! Well, I can’t help with getting it all taken care of, but I can be an ear and a shoulder. You know where I am!

  2. I’m not that surprised. I’ve never watched a VA loan in process but I’ve seen all that other stuff — slow loan processing — slower appraisals — etc. So much of it is regulations. And of course we all know what happens with “de-regulation.” At least thats what this big mess was blamed on initially.

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