This veteran had co-signed for his ex-wife’s mortgage when she bought her home, but now she was struggling with an illness and he’d taken over the payments. That home was going to be sold, but wasn’t on the market yet.

He made great income as a self-employed security consultant and received 100% VA disability benefits, but his income wasn’t enough to float all of his debt, plus his ex-wife’s home, his home, AND a new home.

His 3 kids were living with him and his fiancé while their mom worked on getting better, so he needed a bigger place asap.

He owned a home already with a VA loan; his bonus entitlement wasn’t enough to buy a new home with zero down and he didn’t want to liquidate his IRA for a big down payment.

We closed a HELOC in record time on his existing/departing home so he’d have the $65,000 needed to put down on the new home to satisfy the VA max entitlement calculation.

We coordinated with his Realtor to structure the offer at $860,000 with $25,000 in seller concessions, and used those concessions to pay off some installment debt at closing (FYI, you can payoff debt with seller concessions on VA loans!).

We used a fair-market rent estimate from Zillow to offset the PITI on his departing residence.

With these fixes, his DTI was back in range and he could buy his new home now, then sell his old home(s) later without scrambling to sell them quickly at a discount.

Note - his fiancé contributed to the household income, but that wasn’t considered for loan qualification. We made sure he was comfortable with his overall debt load.

VA loans can be a specialty product. Not all banks and credit unions are comfortable with using fair market rent on a departing residence to ignore the PITI, or pay debt at closing from seller concessions, or stretch on a DTI over 50%. When you have a veteran client that might need an “outside the box” approach, there may still be options.