VA IRRRL (Streamline Refinance)

The VA streamline refinance in Florida, known as an IRRRL, lowers your rate with no appraisal and almost no paperwork.

Key features of the VA streamline refinance in Florida

• No appraisal
• No income verification
• No VA credit underwriting, though most lenders apply a minimum score
• A funding fee of 0.5%, the lowest on any VA loan
• You must already hold a VA loan
• The new loan must lower your rate, or move you from adjustable to fixed
• Typically completed in two to three weeks

Two VA rules exist to protect you from being churned

Lenders solicit IRRRL refinances aggressively, so the VA built in safeguards. Knowing them tells you whether an offer in your mailbox is genuinely worth taking.

Seasoning. At least 210 days must pass from the first payment due date on your current loan, and you must have made six consecutive monthly payments. Therefore you cannot be refinanced repeatedly within a year, however enthusiastic the caller sounds.

Recoupment. The fees and closing costs must be recovered by the monthly saving within 36 months. If a lender cannot demonstrate that, the loan does not qualify. Consequently a refinance costing $4,000 must save you at least about $111 a month, and one that saves less should not be offered to you at all.

Ask any lender who calls to show you the recoupment calculation in writing. It is a rule they must satisfy, not a courtesy.

Why skipping the appraisal helps in Florida

No appraisal means no fresh flood zone review and no revaluation, which protects veterans whose property value slipped or whose FEMA designation was redrawn. Meanwhile the absence of income verification helps self-employed veterans and anyone whose income changed since the original loan.

The trade is that you cannot use a higher value for anything. Since an IRRRL only reduces the rate, that rarely matters, and there is no VA mortgage insurance to remove in any case.

What an IRRRL cannot do

• It cannot give you cash. For that you need a VA cash-out refinance.
• It cannot pay off a non-VA loan, since you must already hold VA financing.
• It cannot remove a borrower in every circumstance, so ask before assuming.

Veterans receiving VA disability compensation pay no funding fee at all, which makes an already cheap refinance cheaper still. See Florida VA loan benefits for the state exemptions worth claiming alongside it.

Source: US Department of Veterans Affairs loan guaranty regulations covering interest rate reduction refinancing loans, including seasoning and fee recoupment requirements. Funding fee amounts and exemptions are published by the VA. Individual lenders add their own requirements.