VA Loan Requirements

The VA home loan benefit is available to veterans, active-duty service members, National Guard and Reserve members with qualifying service, and some surviving spouses. Eligibility is based on when and how long you served — not on your rank, your branch, or whether you deployed.

If you qualify, you get a Certificate of Eligibility (COE). The COE is the document your lender needs to put a VA guaranty behind your loan. Everything else — credit, income, the property itself — is ordinary mortgage underwriting.

VA publishes minimum service requirements. The most common paths to eligibility:

• Active-duty service members: generally eligible after 90 continuous days of service.
• Veterans who served during wartime: typically 90 days of active service.
• Veterans who served during peacetime: typically 181 continuous days of active service.
• National Guard and Reserve members: typically 6 creditable years, or 90 days of active service (including at least 30 consecutive days) under qualifying orders.
• Surviving spouses: spouses of service members who died in the line of duty or from a service-connected disability, and some others, may be eligible.

Discharge status matters too: an other-than-honorable or bad-conduct discharge can complicate eligibility, and VA reviews those cases individually. If your service history is complicated, apply for the COE anyway — the determination is free, and the answer is definitive.

The COE is VA's official confirmation that you qualify for the benefit and how much entitlement you have available. You do not need it in hand before you start house hunting — but you will need it before closing.

Your COE also shows whether you have full entitlement or remaining entitlement, which affects whether loan limits apply to you. See VA loan entitlement and VA loan limits for how that works.

VA itself does not set a minimum credit score. Lenders do, and most look for a score around 620 — though some go lower, and a stronger score earns a better rate. The guaranty lowers the lender's risk; it doesn't remove underwriting.

• Debt-to-income ratio: VA's guideline threshold is 41%, above which the lender must justify the loan — but VA also weighs residual income, so some borrowers above 41% still qualify.
• Residual income: money left each month after the mortgage, debts, and estimated living costs. VA publishes minimums by region and family size.
• Income stability: lenders verify employment and income the same way they do for any mortgage — pay stubs, W-2s, tax returns for self-employment.

Want to see what your income supports before talking to a lender? The VA Affordability Calculator works backwards from your income and debts to a comfortable price range.

• Primary residence: VA loans are for the home you live in — not vacation homes or pure investment properties.
• Occupancy: you're generally expected to move in within a reasonable time (usually about 60 days) after closing.
• Minimum Property Requirements (MPRs): the home must be safe, structurally sound, and sanitary. A VA appraiser checks this; fixer-uppers can fail.
• Multi-unit: you can buy up to four units with a VA loan if you live in one of them.

The appraisal is ordered by your lender through VA, and it's different from a home inspection. An inspection is optional but strongly recommended — it protects you, not the program.

Service time accrues — a Guard or Reserve member short of six years becomes eligible as time passes. If your discharge status is the issue, VA has a discharge upgrade process. And if VA loans aren't available to you at all, FHA and conventional low-down-payment programs use the same math — the mortgage calculator still shows what a payment looks like at any down payment.