The funding-fee waiver — the biggest single benefit
On a standard VA purchase with little or no down payment, the one-time funding fee runs from 2.15% to 3.30% of the loan amount. A veteran who is receiving — or is eligible to receive — VA compensation for a service-connected disability is exempt from that fee entirely. On a larger loan, that waiver alone is worth thousands of dollars in up-front cost that simply goes away.
The exemption typically shows on your Certificate of Eligibility, so the lender can see it directly. It also extends to certain surviving spouses and some other categories. If you paid a funding fee and your disability compensation was effective before your loan closed, you may even be entitled to a refund — we can help you look into that.
Adaptive-housing grants: SAH, SHA, and TRA
Beyond the loan itself, the VA offers grants to help veterans with certain severe service-connected disabilities live more independently at home. These are separate programs from the mortgage, and they can be used alongside a VA loan:
- Specially Adapted Housing (SAH) — the larger grant, to help buy, build, or substantially modify a home for qualifying disabilities such as the loss of use of both legs or certain severe vision conditions.
- Special Home Adaptation (SHA) — a separate grant to adapt an existing home for certain other qualifying service-connected disabilities.
- Temporary Residence Adaptation (TRA) — lets an eligible SAH or SHA veteran apply part of the grant to a home owned by a family member they are living in temporarily.
The VA sets a maximum grant amount that is adjusted each fiscal year, and eligibility is tied to specific qualifying conditions — so the current figures and the exact criteria are confirmed on the VA's disability-housing-grants page, linked above. We can point you to the application path and coordinate it with your loan.
The property-tax angle
Many states offer property-tax relief to qualifying disabled veterans, which can lower the ongoing cost of owning a home — a factor that also affects the escrow portion of a mortgage payment. Tennessee has a property-tax relief program for eligible disabled veterans (and, in some cases, their surviving spouses), administered through the state and your county.
The eligibility rules, the income or rating thresholds, and the amount of relief are set by the state and county — not by your lender — and they change over time, so the authoritative source is your county trustee or assessor and the Tennessee Comptroller's property-tax-relief program. We mention it because it is a real, factual benefit worth asking about; we do not determine or administer it.
For housing-cost context, the median list price across the 16,101 active homes in our Tennessee listings is $499,000 — a live housing-supply figure, not an appraisal or a statement of what you qualify for.
How these stack with the core VA benefit
These advantages sit on top of what every eligible VA borrower already gets: no down payment and no monthly mortgage insurance. For a veteran with a service-connected disability, the funding-fee waiver removes the one notable up-front VA cost, the housing grants can fund accessibility work, and state-level property-tax relief can lower the carrying cost year after year. When you pre-qualify, we read your Certificate of Eligibility, confirm your exemption, and walk through which of these apply to your situation — factually, with no assumptions about your circumstances.
