"I got my VA loan, I got my house"

Housing Buoyed by 20-Year High for Vet’s Loans: Mortgages
Bloomberg Business Week
By Prashant Gopal and Jody Shenn
July 22, 2014

During his third deployment in Afghanistan, Air Force Staff Sgt. Claude Hunter was so eager to return to the U.S. and buy a house that he signed a contract for a property that his agent showed him over Skype.

Hunter got back in time to close the deal, paying $219,000 in May for the four-bedroom Waldorf, Maryland, house that he financed with a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs mortgage. It didn’t require a down payment.

“On Facebook, my friends have started posting: ‘I got my VA loan, I got my house,’” said Hunter, 31. “Everybody is just ready. A lot of them have done their jobs overseas and are coming home.”

America’s fragile housing recovery is getting a boost from military buyers using VA mortgages as the U.S. draws down troops after more than a decade of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. About 4.7 million full-time troops and reservists served during the wars and many are now able to take advantage of one of the easiest and cheapest paths to homeownership. The program’s share of new mortgages, at a 20-year high, is also increasing as other types of government-backed loans have grown more costly.

“The reduction in uncertainty for the returning vets allows them the freedom to spend more, including buying housing,” said Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic Inc., an Irvine, California-based property-data firm. “VA buyers are coming into the market in higher and higher proportions and tend to be first-time buyers, one of the missing drivers in the recovery in housing demand.”
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