10/17/2025
Time for Red Flag #2 for Veterans and Realtors to be on the lookout for. This one is super important, as are all of them. There's a lot here to read, but please stay with me until the end.
🎯Failing to Pull a Certificate of Eligibility (COE)/Not Having a COE
A surprising number of loans fall apart because the lender never pulls the borrower's Certificate of Eligibility (COE) — the document that confirms whether you're eligible for a VA loan. We like to call this the Golden Ticket. About 90ish percent of the time, we are able to get the COE immediately from the VA portal. Sometimes, we need additional documentation, and it can take some time. However, I will not issue a preapproval while we wait, but some will. Until we have that COE, we don't have a qualified Veteran, period.
No lender should ever claim that someone is qualified for a VA home loan, without having the COE in hand. This step should be completed before there is a preapproval issued, and quite honestly at the first conversation between the lender and the borrower, if possible.
Agents, when you receive a VA offer, your first question when you call the lender to check on the preapproval should be, "Have you pulled the buyer's COE?". If they hem and haw or say no not yet, then that preapproval is trash. Veterans, you should confirm your lender has pulled your COE before proceeding with writing any kind of offer on a home.
Now it's time for a little story. Last year 2 different Veterans came to me to get preapproved. Both were preapproved by a lender we shall not name, but their agent's said they should talk to me anyways. We went through our normal process (very different than the 1st lender they spoke with) and upon pulling the COE we found that they were not eligible. I won't go into the specific whys, but these borrowers were ready to write an offer, go under contract, and pay for an inspection. They would have found out pretty quickly (hopefully) that they just wasted their time and money and were not even eligible.
Who you work with matters! Reach out to me at 639-670-1594 for any VA Mortgage questions you have.
