The 0% Down Mortgage Perk That Fast-Tracks Homeownership by 4 Years

When Thomas Couling, a young Air Force veteran, tried to buy his first home in the late 1970s, conventional lenders turned him away.

He had recently left the military, and his $11,287 annual salary as a rookie police officer in Michigan was barely enough to support his wife and newborn child.

"I could not afford to buy a home with that kind of wage," he tells Realtor.com®.

But a VA-backed mortgage gave him an opportunity that conventional financing couldn't. With help from his uncle, a contractor, and money borrowed from relatives to cover upfront costs, Thomas built his first home.

More than three decades later, his son, Coast Guard veteran Matt Couling, would turn to the same benefit to overcome a different obstacle: He had enough income to buy a home, but not enough savings for a substantial down payment.

Their experiences illustrate the findings of a new analysis from Realtor.com, which examines how Veterans Affairs loans can reduce the financial barriers to buying a home.

"At first glance, a 0% down VA loan costs about $20 more per month compared with a similar conforming loan requiring 10% down," explains Jiayi Xu, Realtor.com senior economist and author of the report. "But it saves $41,925 upfront, which cuts the time to homeownership by around four years."

How VA loans help buyers enter the market sooner

Those savings are perhaps the biggest benefit of the VA loan program, because they address the biggest hurdles to homeownership head-on.

Roughly 11% of renter households under 40 have sufficient income to afford a median-priced home but lack the savings for a 10% down payment, according to the Realtor.com analysis of Federal Reserve consumer finance data.

Meanwhile, the median age of first-time homebuyers remains at a record 40, and their share of home purchases sits at just 22%, according to the National Association of Realtors®' latest report.

And those who are breaking in are relying on family help more than ever before. One-quarter (25%) of first-time buyers received gifts or loans from family and friends toward their down payment, according to NAR.

But many would-be buyers can’t count on that kind of family support—just like Matt couldn’t when he purchased his first home near Portland, ME, in 2011.

"The zero money down aspect of the VA loan is really what allowed me to buy my first house," he says.

He’s not alone, either.

Over the past year, 75.7% of VA-financed home purchases required no down payment whatsoever, while 86.1% involved down payments below 10%. By comparison, just 41.1% of home purchases financed with conforming mortgages had down payments below 10%.

But the benefits of VA loans don’t stop there. Between October 2025 and September 2026, the average rate on 30-year fixed VA purchase loans was 5.81%, compared with 6.22% for conforming loans.

When both borrowers put 10% down on a median-priced home, the analysis finds that the VA borrower would save approximately $261 monthly, or more than $3,100 annually.

The program also offers borrowers with less-established credit greater flexibility. Nearly one-quarter (24.3%) of recent VA borrowers had fair credit scores, compared with just 4.8% of conforming borrowers.

The real value of a four-year head start

After about eight years in his first home, Thomas sold it and used the proceeds to help finance another house in the Michigan countryside, where he raised his family.

"Probably without the VA loan, we would have had to rent for several years," he says. Also, they likely wouldn't have accumulated the money needed for their next purchase.

He's speaking to perhaps the biggest long-term advantage that homeownership offers: Each additional year gives owners more time to pay down mortgage debt and potentially benefit from rising property values.

So the earlier you get in, the more room you have to benefit.

Earlier research from Realtor.com found that households buying their first home between ages 28 and 32 had approximately 22.5% more net worth by age 50—equivalent to $119,000—than comparable households that waited until their 40s.

Matt would also discover the value of having access to the benefit at another pivotal moment in his life.

After retiring from the Coast Guard and experiencing a significant financial setback, he wanted to establish a permanent home for his children in Celebration, FL, where he was working for Disney. But the local housing market presented another obstacle.

"While I had recovered some savings at the time, I didn't have sufficient savings to put 20% down on a million-dollar house," he says.

So he used his VA benefit for a second time and was able to purchase the home without exhausting the savings he had rebuilt.

He describes it as far more than a financial investment.

"The availability of the VA loan made buying a house something that I could do, a gift I could give to my children that I otherwise would not have been able to do," he says.

Why veterans aren't always using the benefit

But military service can present its own challenges to becoming a homeowner, even with access to favorable financing.

Active-duty military personnel have substantially lower homeownership rates than the general population, despite higher incomes and educational attainment, according to a 2024 Urban Institute study. Researchers identified frequent moves and younger ages as the two largest contributing factors.

Matt, who retired as a Coast Guard command master chief, says military life often encourages service members to think about their finances in much shorter increments.

"You're basically living two or three years at a time," he says, citing deployments, duty stations, and promotions shaping financial planning.

That short-term focus can make it harder to plan for a home purchase, particularly when service members don't know how long they'll remain in one location.

Awareness is another issue: 68% of current and former service members were unsure or incorrect about whether VA loans required a down payment, according to 2026 survey commissioned by mortgage lender NewDay USA.

Thomas knew about VA mortgages when he left the Air Force, but there was one advantage he didn't discover until years later: The benefit can be used more than once.

"I thought it was a one and done deal," he says.

The Department of Veterans Affairs reiterated in September that eligible borrowers can use the benefit repeatedly, provided they meet applicable lending and occupancy requirements.

Thomas says he would have considered using the benefit again when buying his second home, had he known it was an option. His son, meanwhile, has now used it three times.

"I didn't have 10 years of planning behind that," Matt recalls of his first purchase. "The VA loan allowed me to do that."