According to news from the National Association of Realtors, VA is raising it’s current ceiling from $417,000 to as much as $729,000 on no downpayment home loans.  This is effective immediately and is part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 recently signed by President Bush. 

The law also improves the VA’s Specially Adaptive Housing Program and increases the grant amount from $50,000 to $60,000. This money can be used toward construction of a new home or to modify an existing home to meet adaptive needs of veterens or active duty servicemembers with certain disabilities.

VA loans are available for vets to purchase or construct single family homes and purchase condominiums or cooperative housing units.  There are approximately 2.3 million VA loans, 90% of which were made with little or no downpayment.

This amount of increase for vets to purchase homes could help boost sales in the Luxury Home market, as well as allow upper income veterens the opportunity to maximize their borrowing power.  Here in the Tucson real estate market, buyers still have the upperhand, and currently there are over 600 homes listed in the $500,000 to $749,999 range.

Denise