USAA Mover's Advantage Review Part 1 - First Contact

In June of 2013, I found out that I was going to be stationed at Barksdale AFB, LA.  After 14 years in the military, I decided it was time to buy my first house.  I did some research and wanted to try USAA's Mover's Advantage program to purchase a house.  This is the first of many posts about the whole process so people can learn from my process.

The first thing I learned was that USAA offers up to $3,100 in cash bonus for buying or selling a home in certain states.  One of the states that you can't get that bonus is Louisiana, so that was disappointing.  I still pressed and applied to be entered in the program on the USAA website.  At the time of applying, I am/was stationed at Kunsan AB, Korea so in the comments section I put that my primary means of communication is my e-mail.  For some reason that request was ignored, because it's most likely an automated process.  They called my wife's phone number and sent correspondence my mail to my home address in California.  I was disappointed in this because USAA is usually well equipped to handle these type of situations where the primary means of contact is e-mail.

I decided to call them directly and talked to a nice representative and explained my situation.  She said she would update my primary means of contact to e-mail and then transferred me to the mortgage section.  Again, I was disappointed because I still get charged for 1-800 numbers from the Korean service I have.  But, the USAA is customer service was still far superior to any other bank I've ever dealt with.  After about 10-20 mins of questions, and after pulling me and my wife's credit report, I was pre-approved.  I chose to go with the VA loan pre-application.  Here were some considerations that the mortgage representative brought up:

• There is a VA Fee of 2.2% of the home loan (you can put it on your loan)
• As of August 2013, the VA was 1/8th of a percentage better and less likely to impacted if interest rates were too rise before January
• There is a $50 pre-approval fee that you have to pay upfront to USAA but they can automatically take it from your USAA Checkings and/or Credit Card
• Once you find the house you like, then you will have to pay another $300 for a conversion fee from pre-approval to actual approval
• I approved for the VAs' no down payment loan and there is no Premium Mortgage Insurance

I'll be interested in my readers' experiences.  Please share them by leaving a comment.