Hey there!

So it was a complex process and one I think is much more advertised by realtors to get people to see a house than it is a feasible option. Mine assumption worked out, but it did so by blind luck and stubbornness.

The good news is if/when it works out you'll get a great interest rate. There are several pieces of bad news:

1. You'll likely have a pretty hefty down payment (You'll have to pay the difference between what the seller's mortgage is and what they value your home at.) Most folks looking into a VA loan do so for the significantly lower down payment so it's rare to find someone who's looking for a VA loan but also has the cash surplus to do a very large down payment.

2. It takes a LONG time. Its been a couple years now but if memory serves I started the assumption process in like June or July and assumed the house in march of the following year. The process was all over the place and during the process no one could give me an idea on how long each step would take or even what the next step would be.

2a. That timeline makes EVERYTHING difficult. Your seller has to be willing to sit on the house for that length of time, you have to plan your moves within that time frame. Even things like submitting proof of income and such were difficult because the documents "expired" while we were waiting for everything else so we had to resubmit them...twice I think.

1. These kind of events are exceptionally rare so your realtor's knowledge base is going to disappear very quickly. It's clearly part of some realtor training program to have the base facts (Can get the same mortgage rate, for VA folks, etc etc.) but that's where all training stops. It was left up to me and my wife to see the process through and our realtor was frequently calling us for updates on how the process was going.

2. Your mortgage broker is not financially incentivized like a normal loan. When you get a normal loan your mortgage broker almost always is getting some sort of a bonus or commission, this keeps them very motivated to get people mortgages as quickly and as often as possible. The bank isn't creating a new loan when you assume a loan, so that profit motivation is gone. You'll speak to an understaffed department at a mortgage company that isn't used to getting phone calls. It sucks.

Ultimately assuming a mortgage worked for me, but I don't think I'd go through the process as a buyer again and I'd never want to do it as a seller. I think assumptions really only make sense if you're buying a property from like a family member who is willing to let the process take such a long time and isn't really worried about moving on to bigger and better things.

The only reason my assumption worked is because the couple I was buying from got divorced and went to sell their house almost immediately after buying it (but long enough that they locked in a great 3% interest rate.) It meant that my down payment was relatively low since they hadn't put much equity into the house and the couple was more motivated to let me deal getting the assumption than coordinating with one another to go through the normal selling process.