Veterans don’t get taken advantage of by the veteran lenders. There are a couple companies out there right now that heavily advertise to veterans and attract them by making them think that they’re a company that is focused around serving veterans. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
There are a couple things to understand about these types of lenders. One, they target veterans to take advantage of them, typically by charging higher rates and higher fees because they’ve built the trust of being the “veteran lender.” They understand people likely won’t shop them. They’re just going to go through them, trusting that they’re doing the right thing.
Another thing to consider is their guidelines aren’t built around helping veterans. They have a specific type of veteran that they want to serve. To give you an example of this, at Arnaiz Mortgage, we have VA loan programs that will go down to a 500 minimum credit score. Some of these companies that target veterans have minimum credit scores anywhere from 620 to 660, which is significantly higher.
When they turn down borrowers who don’t meet their minimum credit score guidelines, they don’t tell them that they could possibly qualify somewhere else. They would rather them just not qualify and not purchase a home because they don’t fall into the criteria of what they’re looking for.
So you could potentially be somebody who was turned down by one of these lenders and be perfectly qualifiable with a local independent mortgage broker. If you are a veteran looking to do a VA loan, shop around with your local independent mortgage broker. We have more options, we have aggressive pricing for vets, and we have low costs.
