Every so often, I have the pleasure of working with a home buyer who plans to use a VA loan to buy a home in Sacramento. VA buyers aren't as plentiful in the neighborhoods where I primarily work such as Land Park, Curtis Park, Midtown Sacramento or East Sacramento, which is why I don't write very many offers for VA buyers.
It's not like it was in the mid-1970s when the odds of writing a VA offer were 1 in 3. I think the last VA buyer I worked with was maybe 2 years ago. And she ended up buying a bank-owned home in Rosemont that had been on the market for about 6 months. Because the VA requires a pest completion (unlike most FHA loans), that transaction was particularly challenging, since the bank initially refused to pay for a clear pest. Throw into it the last remaining funds from a community grant program, unauthorized buyer repairs and a person suffering from a bipolar disorder, let's just say it was an escrow that I was thrilled to see closed.
A disturbing phenomena in Sacramento is the fact that VA home buyers tend to fall to the bottom of a lot of sellers' preference piles. Short and sweet, although unfair, very few sellers want to sell to a VA buyer. Foreclosure flippers may, because the VA doesn't have the 90-day seasoning requirements like FHA, but the truth is many sellers and their listing agents discriminate against VA buyers.
This is how VA buyers rank in priority among many home sellers in Sacramento:
- Cash buyers
- Conventional buyers
- FHA buyers
- VA buyers
Why do we treat the men and women who served and perhaps fought for our country like this? Why aren't VA buyers at the top of that list? Their loans are guaranteed by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Now, sellers are prohibited from discriminating against a buyer due to race, religion, color, sex, disability, family status or national origin. Yet, many sellers refuse to accept an offer from a credit-worthy VA buyer.
Against the odds, I found a home in East Sacramento for a VA buyer last weekend. It was on the market for only a week. We asked the seller to pay all of the buyer's closing costs. The negotiations were stressful for the hopeful buyers, but the good news is the sellers accepted the buyers' offer exactly the way I wrote it. It is very likely we will close before November 30th, too, so the buyers may qualify for the first-time home buyer tax credit.
I'd like to suggest that perhaps Sacramento home sellers should reconsider VA buyers and give them priority, especially in a multiple-offer situation. I believe we owe it to ourselves and to our country to elevate these buyers to the status they deserve.
---
Elizabeth Weintraub is an author, home buying columnist for The New York Times-owned About.com, a Land Park resident, and a Land Park real estate agent who specializes in older, classic homes in Land Park, Curtis Park, Midtown and East Sacramento. Weintraub is also a Sacramento Short Sale agent who lists and successfully sells short sales throughout Sacramento. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put 35 years of real estate experience to work for you. DRE License # 00697006.
The Short Sale Savior, by Elizabeth Weintraub, available through bookstores everywhere and at Amazon.com.
Photo: Unless otherwise noted in this blog, the photo is copyrighted by Big Stock Photo and used with permission.
;)
;)
VA loans tend to be a bit stigmatized by TWO things:
1. It generally COSTS the seller more money to have a buyer go VA (from the 100% type financing to the 1.5%-3% fee added by law to all VA loans)
2. Generally the closing time on a VA loan is much longer than a conventional loan...sometimes even longer than an FHA loan.
Now, I'm not saying either item above is written in blood, it IS the reason that most agents avoid working with VA loan types. Another reason is that many mortgage people, especially those that came into the mortgage business within the last 5 years or so, have no clue how to do VA loans. Conventional ruled the day but that has started to shift and now we see a lot more FHA and VA being done (and out of necessity, all those lenders are learning how to do VA and FHA or they are going obsolete!).