VA Loan: Certificate of Eligibility

Question: Okay, so I’m discharged from the military. I have a DD214. How do I go about getting a COE that I’m hearing about, and what is that?

Okay, so if you’re discharged from the military and we’re going to do a VA home loan, what you’re going to do is you’re going to get me a copy of that DD214, and then from there, I will go to the VA website, and I will be able to obtain your certificate of eligibility.

That’s what a COE is, certificate of eligibility. And basically, that gives me the understanding of what branch of service you were in. It tells me your entitlement as far as how much money that you have the ability to borrow. It tells me if there’s any other liens that were out there that are encumbering the entitlement, so it would show me how much available entitlement is there. So it’s the document that we’re going to use to set up the amount of money that you’re going to be able to have the ability to borrow.

Now, the veteran still has to qualify, but that does give us the ability to know what loan amount is going to be available.