The Home Loan Benefit Too Many Veterans Never Use

I'm Mike Morrell, co-founder and team lead of Dream Team United. Before I ever sold a house, I spent time in the Marine Corps. I was born in New Jersey and grew up in Pennsylvania, then the Corps took me all over: Parris Island, Camp Lejeune, Fort Devens, Corry Station, and eventually Guam with Company C, MarSptBn. After that came Florida, then the Charlotte area in 2008, and I never left.

That background is a big part of why I'm so passionate about helping other veterans buy homes.

Here's what I see over and over in this business. A lot of agents get nervous the second a VA loan comes up in a contract. They start worrying about how tough the appraisal is going to be, what inspections might trip things up, whether the deal will actually close. Honestly, that reaction tells you more about the agent than it does about the loan. A VA loan is one of the easiest, most straightforward financing programs out there. If anything, agents should be encouraging veterans to use it, not steering them away from it.

And that's the part that really gets me. There are so many veterans out there who qualify for this benefit and just aren't using it. These are people who signed a contract to put their lives on the line, to do whatever it took to keep the rest of us safe. In return, they get access to one of the best home financing benefits available anywhere: the ability to buy a home with no money down and often at a better interest rate than a conventional loan. That's not a small thing. That's life-changing. And too many people who earned it don't even know it's on the table.

So a lot of what I do now, beyond helping people buy and sell homes across the Carolinas, is making sure veterans actually understand what they've got. Education first. If someone's eligible for a VA loan and doesn't know how it works or assumes it's more complicated than it is, that's a conversation worth having, whether they end up working with me or not.

That's the mission behind Dream Team United's work with military families. I'm honored to be ranked a KW Military Top 1% Agent nationwide, and it's something I take personally, not just a line on a bio.

https://youtu.be/UmWZeLZ0CaU

If you're a veteran, active duty, or a military family thinking about buying a home anywhere across the Carolinas — Fort Mill, Rock Hill, Charlotte, the Triad around Greensboro, the Triangle around Chapel Hill and Raleigh, or Wilmington — let's talk about what your VA benefit can actually do for you. You earned it. Use it.