You earned this and somebody explained about a third of it to you. That is the pattern I see almost every week. I am a U.S. Army Veteran, I run VA files constantly, and the most common thing I find is a veteran sitting in a conventional loan with mortgage insurance he never needed to be paying.
It is not a loan from the government. It is a loan from a regular lender that the Department of Veterans Affairs partially guarantees, and that guarantee is why the terms are what they are. No down payment on most purchases. No monthly mortgage insurance, ever, which is the part that quietly saves the most money. Limits on what closing costs you can be charged. And it is not a one-time card, you can use it again.
There is a VA funding fee on most files. On a first use with nothing down it is 2.15% of the loan, and on a subsequent use at zero down it is 3.3%. It can be financed into the loan rather than paid at closing. And it is waived completely if you receive compensation for a service connected disability, or if you are a Purple Heart recipient on active duty. That last part is worth saying out loud because a lot of eligible veterans pay a fee they never owed.
Entitlement is how much of your benefit is available right now. If you have never used it, or you used it and the loan is paid off and the home sold, you generally have full entitlement, and at full entitlement there is no VA loan limit. If you still own a home with a VA loan on it, you have partial entitlement, which usually still lets you buy again, sometimes with a small down payment. The only way to know which one you are is to pull your Certificate of Eligibility, and I can pull that for you in the first conversation.
Usually yes. It depends on how much entitlement is currently tied up. Paid off and sold generally means restored in full. Still owning the first home usually means partial entitlement, which is often enough to buy again with little or nothing down.
VA itself does not set one. Individual lenders do, and those overlays vary widely, which is exactly the situation where a broker is worth more than a bank. A score that one lender declines another will approve.
Yes, generally within 60 days of closing. Exceptions exist for active duty, for a spouse occupying on your behalf, and for certain deployments. A two to four unit property is allowed if you live in one of the units.
The VA streamline refinance. If you already have a VA loan and rates have moved, it lets you refinance into a lower rate with reduced documentation and usually no new appraisal. It is one of the simplest transactions in the business and it is badly underused.
It takes one look at your Certificate of Eligibility to know where you stand. No credit pull to have the conversation, and if a conventional loan beats VA for your file, I will tell you that too.