VA Loan Refinance Dillema

[Kahleb Kelsey]

Hello everyone! My name is Captain Kahleb Kelsey, I live near the Bay Area in Vacaville CA in a duplex that I'm currently househacking. I purchased the duplex with the VA loan, and have just met the occupancy requirements. I am pretty confident that I have enough equity to refinance out of the VA loan into a conventional loan so that I can reuse my VA loan to get into another property.

Here's my dilemma: I can either refinance into an owner occupied conventional and keep the rate about the same and low, but I'll have to live in the duplex for another 6 months to a year. OR...I can refinance into a conventional investment loan, which would raise the rate about 0.5% and the payment about $200, but I can use the VA loan again at any time to get into another property.

There is no property that works for my situation that is currently on the market, so I'd be rolling the dice on whether or not the flexibility that comes with the investment loan is potentially worth the extra cost on the loan when there may not be a property that pops up that works for who knows how long. What do you guys think? Any input is greatly appreciated, thank you!

[Jared Rine]

@Kahleb Kelsey...I have some recent experience with this on some level as someone close to me is in a similar situation that I'm helping them with. I think if you feel that you'd be rolling the dice on finding a property, then you probably want to give yourself some time, and that would mean going into an owner occ conventional and staying there while maybe taking a little bit to see what the market is going to do. It's incredibly a sellers market right now, so it might be good to free up your VA entitlement and then sit for a little bit and see what happens. Peoples' situations always can change, so let's say you do refi into the conventional and then 90 days later, you find a property to go VA. No one is going to say anything or come confirm that you're still living there. If you were paying the note off, then you might have had an issue, but since you're planning to keep as rental, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about. That's just my $0.02 (and that's from a lender perspective)