Jacksonville veterans buy more homes than civilians, top market trends for loans

In a city with two Navy bases, it isn’t surprising to hear Jacksonville was the 15th biggest city for Veterans Affairs home loans in 2021.

“It is a major market for veteran homebuyers,” said Chris Birk, vice president of mortgage insight at Veterans United Home Loans, the country’s largest VA loan company.

Compared to civilians, veterans, including active duty military members, feel more financially stable and more capable of securing a home loan, according to a recent quarterly national survey from Veterans United Home Loans.

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The survey also suggests veteran and military buyers are becoming more comfortable with and accepting of today’s higher mortgage rates, even if they’re still far above their ideal rate.

Birk said the survey findings also indicated more veterans feel homeownership is within reach than civilians do, at 56% and 54%, respectively.

“They’re still optimistic that they will be in a better place financially in a year,” Birk said. “It has just become increasingly challenging over the last year to make that dream happen.”

In the wake of the pandemic, mortgage lending has seen the biggest increase it’s seen in a long time, but like most home buying trends, veterans’ home buying has gone down over the last year.

The silver lining for VA loans is that the decline hasn’t been as steep as it has been for other types of loans.

However, homeownership rates for veterans overall are looking up — despite the market preventing some from buying homes as quickly as they may have hoped with competing cash offers.

The current veteran homeownership rate in this country is about 80%, Birk said, and the interest rate environment is having a significant impact on all buyers.

“The one differential that helps veterans is that VA rates in general tend to be lower,” he added. “VA rates tend to be the lowest on the market.”

Similarly in feelings about financial stability, about 27% of veterans said they feel stressed about their finances compared to 42% of civilians.

“On average, veterans have a tendency to have higher incomes and more assets than civilians,” Birk said.

Compared to a year ago, more veterans now also feel they’re better off financially.

In Jacksonville specifically, Birk said a trend he’s seen is in younger veterans and service members being able to break into the housing market.

Christopher Goodyear, a 32-year-old paramedic and firefighter in Jacksonville, is one of those who recently benefited from a VA loan.

The Navy veteran said homebuying can be a confusing and overwhelming process, and it wasn’t until after he purchased his first home and was looking to move to Orange Park that he heard about VA loans.

“They took care of everything for us,” he said. “It was literally hassle-free.”

Goodyear said he wished he’d known about this when he got out of the Navy 13 years ago.

“The process seems confusing, but it’s really not,” he said. “The worst thing they can say is they can’t help us, but 9 times out of 10, they have an answer.”

One of the biggest misconceptions people have about VA loans, Birk said, is that it’s a one-time benefit.

“Once you earn this, it’s yours for life,” he said. “You can not only reuse the benefit but also have more than one VA loan at the same time.”

Other misconceptions include people thinking VA loans are more expensive or harder to get than other conventional loans, Birk said.

Some of the biggest benefits for using VA loans are financial ones, including giving them the ability to buy without a downpayment, Birk said, a feature about 75% of VA loans have.

Out of 300 million VA loans, about 75% had an interest rate of 4% or under, and 43% had below 3% — which is almost twice as many as civilians, he said.

Goodyear said he would “definitely use a VA loan again” and also recommend it to other veterans after his experience.

“There were a few things a little off just because of what the buyer wanted and what we wanted, but they helped us even track down our home insurance,” he said. “They were with us every step of the way.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Veterans feel more financially secure, sure about homeownership possibilities