VA mortgages are one of the few ways you can buy a home with no down payment.  Generally speaking, the VA gives lenders a guarantee of 25 percent of the loan amount up to a certain limit.  This is known as the VA guaranty. For the lender, that’s like having a 25 percent down payment, which is a substantial amount.  So you can finance 100 percent of the cost of your home.

borrowers who have little or no established credit history – they’ve never had things like credit cards, auto loans, etc. or made little use of them – can sometimes qualify for a VA mortgage using what’s called alternate credit history.  That uses records of things like payments for rent, utilities, cell phone service, internet services or other things billed regularly to show a record of reliably making payments on schedule.

As with other types of loans, current VA mortgage rates fluctuate depending on market conditions. VA mortgage rates today may be different from VA mortgage rates next week or even tomorrow. This is why it’s important, when shopping for a VA loan from various lenders, to get all your rate quotes the same day, preferably within a few hours of each other, so you can make an accurate comparison of the rates VA lenders are offering.