VA Loan Certificate of Eligibility

If you are considering purchasing a home with a VA Loan, or refinancing your home with a VA Loan, you will need a Certificate of Eligibility from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The primary reason for most who seek a Certificate of Eligibility is to determine their VA Home Loan Eligibility, but other reasons include:

VA loan certificate of eligibility

There are two ways to obtain your Certificate of Eligibility:

  1. Through the VA
  2. Through a VA Lender (if purchasing or refinancing with a VA Loan)

Requesting Through Your Lender

If you have already begun the VA Loan Process, your VA Lender should be able to process your COE request through the Automated Certificate of Eligibility system that VA-approved lenders have access to, which takes less time than going through the VA. However, there are instances in which the ACE system cannot process a COE request, and you or your lender will have to go through the VA to obtain it using the steps above.

If you have further questions about requesting your Certificate of Eligibility, please contact me through the form below.

Requesting Through the VA

You will need to complete VA Form 26-1880, the VA COE Request Form.

You will also want to send along copies of any discharge or separation documents* that you have along with the completed form. If you served and were discharged after 1975, it is possible that no documentation is necessary. However sending along those documents should prevent any delays to you receiving your COE. Standard response time from the VA for a COE is 10 days.

*Please do not send original documents. Photocopies will suffice. If you are trying to restore your VA Loan Benefit, please include any evidence that the previous VA Loan benefit has been paid in full, a HUD-1 for instance.

Once you have completed the 26-1880 and included all the necessary documents with it, you will send that information to the Winston-Salem Eligibility Center:

VA Loan Eligibility Center
PO Box 20729
Winston-Salem, NC 27120

And for Overnight Delivery:

VA Loan Eligibility Center
251 N. Main Street
Winston-Salem, NC 27155

Contact Me

This website is published by Kevin Kaiser. If you'd like to contact me about the content or if you have a question about VA Loans, please email me here.