Are you eligible for a VA loan? How to know before you find the house

Am I eligible for a VA loan?

Eligibility comes down to how you served. Most people who served on active duty after August 1990 clear the bar without much thought — the categories below cover the common paths:

• Veterans and active duty: 90 continuous days of active service during wartime, or 181 days during peacetime. Service in the Gulf War era — which began in August 1990 and is still open — almost always meets the wartime threshold. If you entered service after September 1980, the VA generally looks for 24 continuous months, or the full period you were called to active duty.
• National Guard and Reserve: six creditable years in the Selected Reserve, or 90 days of active duty under Title 10, or 90 cumulative days of full-time Title 32 duty with at least 30 of them consecutive — a 2020 change that opened the benefit to many who were activated but never federally deployed.
• Surviving spouses: spouses of service members who died in service or from a service-connected disability may qualify, generally as long as they have not remarried.
• Discharged for a service-connected disability: a disability discharge can waive the minimum service-time requirement entirely.

One thing to be clear about: eligibility is not the same as approval. Your service is what the Certificate of Eligibility confirms — but a lender still looks at your credit, income, and assets separately. The VA itself sets no minimum credit score; individual lenders set their own. And the loan has to be for a home you will live in, not a pure investment property, though a two-to-four-unit building can work as long as you occupy one of the units.

What will your funding fee be?

The funding fee is the VA loan’s main cost. It stands in for the down payment and the monthly mortgage insurance every other buyer carries, and it keeps the program self-funding for the next veteran. It is a one-time charge, and most people finance it into the loan rather than pay it at closing.

The first thing to check is whether you owe it at all. If you have a service-connected disability rating at any level, or you are an eligible surviving spouse, or certain Purple Heart recipients, the fee is zero. If you are not exempt, it moves on two things: whether this is your first time using the benefit or a repeat use, and how much you put down. First-time use with nothing down runs 2.15%; putting 5% down drops it to 1.5%, and 10% down to 1.25%. A repeat use with little down is higher, at 3.3%. The VA funding fee breakdown walks through every case, and the funding fee calculator gives you your exact number by use, down payment, and exemption.

Can you use a VA loan more than once?

Yes. The benefit is reusable, not a single shot — and a lot of veterans assume it is one-and-done when it isn’t. There are a few ways it works:

• Sell and restore. If you sell the home and pay off the VA loan, your full entitlement is restored and you can use it again like the first time.
• One-time restoration. If you have paid off a VA loan but kept the home, you can restore your entitlement once without selling — useful, but once you use it, it is gone.
• Keep one, buy another. You do not always have to sell. If a move turns your first home into a rental, you can often buy the next one with your remaining “second-tier” entitlement and carry two VA loans at the same time.

One catch worth planning for: a repeat use carries that higher 3.3% funding fee unless you are exempt, and the entitlement math gets specific to your county and your prior loan. Using your VA loan more than once covers the full mechanics — restoration, second-tier entitlement, and holding two VA loans at the same time. It is exactly the kind of thing worth running before you commit, not after.

The one document that settles all three

Every answer above — your eligibility, your available entitlement, and your funding fee status — lives on a single document: your Certificate of Eligibility, or COE. It is what a lender uses to confirm you qualify, and it states your funding fee status in plain language, in two places worth knowing on sight: the FUNDING FEE field near the top, and a Funding Fee line under CONDITIONS at the bottom.

Read those two lines and you know your fee. If they say exempt — which covers a service-connected disability rating at any level, eligible surviving spouses, and certain Purple Heart recipients — your fee is zero. If they say not exempt, you will pay the standard fee, and the subsequent-use note tells you whether you are at the first-time or repeat rate. Most veterans fall in the not-exempt group, and that is simply the ordinary case: the fee is what takes the place of a down payment and monthly mortgage insurance, and it is almost always financed into the loan rather than paid up front. Either way, you now know your number before you have written a single offer.

One more detail the certificate itself flags: if you have already closed a VA loan and paid the fee, but your disability compensation carries an effective date earlier than that loan’s closing date, you may be owed a refund. You can start that through your servicer or the VA Regional Loan Center at (877) 827-3702.

How to pull your COE

The easiest way is to get it yourself — it is your document, and you do not need anyone’s permission to see it.

• Online at VA.gov. The simplest route. Sign in and request it at the VA’s Request a COE page; when the VA has your service on file — true for about two-thirds of requests — it generates a downloadable PDF on the spot. Their how-to guide shows what each service type needs.
• In the VA app. If you already have an active COE, you can view and save it in the VA: Health and Benefits mobile app, a feature added in 2026. You cannot request a new one there, but it is the fastest place to pull up one you already have.
• By mail. As a last resort, complete VA Form 26-1880 and mail it to the VA Regional Loan Center. It is slow, but it gets there if the online route cannot verify your service automatically.

Know your answers first

The veterans who have the smoothest purchases are the ones who sorted all of this out before they found the house — not while they were racing a contract deadline. If you know you are eligible, you know your fee, and you know whether you are using fresh or remaining entitlement, you can shop like a prepared buyer instead of hoping it all works out at the closing table.