About 2,820 veterans live in Burleson, and 9,137 across Johnson County as a whole. I work with a lot of them, and the same three things come up every time — the funding fee they did not know they were exempt from, the Texas property tax exemption nobody told them about, and the Texas Land Board loan they assumed was an alternative to their VA benefit instead of something that stacks with it.
This is the whole picture in one place. Where a detail deserves its own article I have linked one, so you can go as deep as you want and skip the rest.
Four things, and the fourth is the one people underrate.
And one thing that is not a benefit but gets sold as one: the VA does not set a minimum credit score. The VA’s own buyer’s guide says so plainly. Any score floor you are quoted is your lender’s rule, not the VA’s — which means it is worth calling a second lender before you accept a no.
Not since 1 January 2020. The Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act removed it. The VA says it in one sentence on its own site: “You don’t have a loan limit (as long as you can afford the loan amount and the property appraisal supports the purchase price of the home).”
County loan limits still exist, but they only matter if your entitlement is partially used — if you already have a VA loan out on another house. That math is in using your VA loan more than once.
They used to. They have not since 1 January 2020, same law. The statutory fee table shows separate columns for active duty and reservists before that date and identical rates after it. If you are drilling with the Texas Army National Guard or out of NAS Fort Worth JRB — a joint reserve base with roughly 10,000 personnel across about forty commands, a lot of them drilling reservists with civilian careers here in DFW — you pay exactly what an active-duty buyer pays.
There are four separate routes in federal law to get your entitlement back, including one that lets you restore it without selling the house. That one is once-in-a-lifetime, so spend it deliberately. Whole article: using your VA loan more than once.
The VA loan has no mortgage insurance, but it does have a one-time funding fee. For a purchase with nothing down it is 2.15% the first time you use the benefit and 3.30% after that. Put five percent down and both numbers collapse to 1.50%.
I have sat at closing tables with veterans who had a 30% rating and were about to finance a fee they did not owe. Get your Certificate of Eligibility early — the exemption is normally shown right on it. Full breakdown, including what happens when a rating comes through after you close: the VA funding fee, explained.
Texas has no state income tax, which is exactly why property tax matters more here than in whatever state you are moving from. And the Texas veteran exemptions are unusually generous compared with most states.
| Exemption | What it does |
|---|---|
| 100% disabled veteran Tax Code § 11.131 |
Total exemption on your homestead’s appraised value. You qualify at a 100% rating or at individual unemployability paid at the 100% rate. |
| Partial disabled veteran Tax Code § 11.22 |
$5,000 to $12,000 knocked off the property’s value, by rating tier. Not off your tax bill — off the value. |
| Surviving spouse of a veteran who died of a presumptive condition
Tax Code § 11.136 — new |
Total homestead exemption, regardless of the veteran’s rating at death. Texas voters approved this on 4 November 2025 and hardly anyone knows it exists. |
Two Burleson-specific things. First, Burleson sits in two counties, so which appraisal district you file with depends on which side of the line your house is on — Johnson County Central Appraisal District for most of the city, Tarrant Appraisal District for the northern slice. File with the wrong one and you lose a year.
Second, Johnson County runs a veterans services office right here in Burleson, at the sub-courthouse on Elk Drive, and they will help you with the paperwork for free. Details, dollar figures and the surviving-spouse trap that catches people when they downsize: the Texas disabled veteran property tax exemption.
This is the benefit I most often find people have never heard of, and the thing they get wrong about it is fundamental.
The Texas Veterans Land Board is a lender, not a substitute for your VA benefit. You can use a VLB home loan and your VA guaranty on the same purchase. The General Land Office says so directly: veterans combining VA-backed benefits with the VLB program may qualify for financing with no down payment and no PMI.
A VA disability rating of 30% or greater gets you a discounted interest rate on the home loan and the home improvement loan. I am not going to print a rate here, because the Land Board adjusts its base rate weekly and anything I quote will be wrong by the time you read it. Call them at 1-800-252-8387 or check the current number on the Land Office site.
Burleson is in the middle of a building boom, and VA buyers tour those model homes constantly. Two things changed recently that most agents have not caught up with.
The VA Builder ID requirement is gone. As of a VA circular dated 31 March 2025, VA-guaranteed loans on new and proposed construction no longer require the builder to hold a VA identification number. Every article telling you to check your builder’s VA Builder ID is out of date for an ordinary purchase.
And the VA rewrote its property standards effective after 1 May 2026, dropping the radon testing requirement outright and revising the rules for pre-1978 and post-1978 homes. The VA said the point was to cut delays and costs that were making veterans less competitive.
The whole thing — including the one-year builder warranty, what changes when a spec home was finished before the VA ever saw it, and how MUD and PID taxes hit your payment out here: using a VA loan on new construction in Burleson.
Two jobs at once: setting a value, and checking the house against a safety standard. Confusing the two is why VA buyers get told their offer is weak by people who have not read the rules. I wrote that up separately in what a VA appraisal actually looks for.
But here are the two pieces every VA buyer in this market should know by heart.
Tidewater. If the appraiser thinks the value is coming in under the contract price, they have to say so before finishing the report and give roughly two business days for someone to send supporting sales. That someone is your agent. An agent who is unreachable, or who sends a Zillow screenshot instead of closed comparables with adjustments, has just wasted the best chance the deal had.
The escape clause. Federal regulation requires this language in the contract on every VA-guaranteed purchase:
“the purchaser shall not incur any penalty by forfeiture of earnest money or otherwise be obligated to complete the purchase of the property described herein, if the contract purchase price or cost exceeds the reasonable value of the property established by the Department of Veterans Affairs.”
Read that again. If the appraisal comes in low, you can walk with your earnest money.
The VA’s guidance is that the clause must be signed by buyer and seller on all VA purchase loans where the contract is signed before the veteran receives the Notice of Value, and that if the clause is not in the contract the VA will not guarantee the loan. That is the real enforcement mechanism — not that a seller is forbidden to object, but that the deal does not happen without it. You can still choose to proceed and cover a gap in cash; the clause removes the obligation, it does not void the contract.
Ever heard of an assumable loan? It is as simple as it sounds — kind of. You take over the seller’s existing loan: the payment, the interest rate and the balance. If the seller locked in a low rate a few years ago, that can be a HUGE win.
Three things to know before you get excited:
I have the people to handle VA assumptions, and I will walk you through every step.
Not if you have full entitlement. VA loan limits were eliminated effective January 1, 2020 by the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act. The VA states that a borrower with full entitlement has no loan limit as long as they can afford the payment and the appraisal supports the price. County loan limits still matter in one situation only: if part of your entitlement is already tied up in another VA loan. In that case your remaining entitlement is 25 percent of the county loan limit minus the entitlement you have already used. The 2026 baseline conforming loan limit that feeds that formula is $832,750.
No. Veterans receiving VA compensation for a service-connected disability are exempt from the funding fee entirely, at any rating — it is not limited to 100 percent. So are veterans who would be entitled to compensation but for receiving retirement or active-duty pay, surviving spouses of veterans who died from a service-connected disability and receive Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, and active-duty service members who provide evidence of a Purple Heart on or before closing. On a $300,000 zero-down first-use purchase, the exemption is worth about $6,450. Your exemption normally appears on your Certificate of Eligibility, so pull it before you shop.
Yes. This is the most common misunderstanding I run into. The Texas Veterans Land Board is a lender; the VA guaranty is the insurance behind the loan. They work together rather than competing. The Texas General Land Office states that veterans combining VA-backed home buying benefits with the VLB program may qualify for financing with no down payment and no PMI. The VLB home loan maximum rose to $832,750 in January 2026, and veterans with a VA disability rating of 30 percent or greater qualify for a discounted interest rate. The home must be your primary residence in Texas for at least three years.
Not since January 1, 2020. Before that date the statutory fee table did charge reservists more — 2.40 percent versus 2.15 percent on a zero-down first use. The Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act eliminated that difference, and the table has shown identical rates for active duty and reserve component members ever since. Some VA pages and a great deal of lender content still say otherwise. If anyone quotes you a higher fee because you are Guard or Reserve, that is simply wrong.
It is language that federal regulation requires in the sales contract on every VA-guaranteed purchase where the contract is signed before the veteran receives the Notice of Value. It provides that the purchaser 'shall not incur any penalty by forfeiture of earnest money or otherwise be obligated to complete the purchase' if the contract price exceeds the reasonable value established by the VA. In plain terms: if the appraisal comes in below your contract price, you can walk away with your earnest money. You may still choose to proceed and pay the difference in cash — the clause removes the obligation to close, it does not cancel the contract for you. The VA requires the clause where the contract is signed before the Notice of Value issues; without it the VA will not guarantee the loan. Confirm current figures with your lender, the VA or your appraisal district — this is general information, not lending or tax advice.
No. The VA's own buyer's guide states that the VA does not require a minimum credit score, though most lenders use one. Any score floor you are quoted is that lender's overlay, not a VA rule, and overlays vary a lot between lenders. If one lender turns you down on score alone, it is worth calling another before you assume the VA loan is closed to you.
About 2,820, per the Census Bureau's 2020-2024 American Community Survey estimates. Johnson County as a whole has roughly 9,137 veterans and Tarrant County about 99,576. Burleson's position on the south side of the Metroplex puts it within commuting range of NAS Fort Worth JRB, a joint reserve base with about 10,000 active duty, Guard, Reserve and civilian personnel across roughly forty commands, without Fort Worth pricing.
Buying in Burleson with a VA loan? Tell me where you are in the process and what your rating is, and I will tell you which of these actually apply to you — the funding fee exemption, the Texas tax exemption, the Land Board loan, or all three. I am not a lender and I am not selling you a loan. I just do not like watching veterans leave money on the table because nobody mentioned it.
Ask me about your VA benefitChecked September 2026. VA loan rules and Texas exemption amounts change — confirm current figures with your lender, the VA, or your appraisal district before you rely on them. I am a REALTOR, not a lender or a tax professional.
REALTOR® · BHHS PenFed Realty Texas
I help buyers and sellers across the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex — Fort Worth, Burleson, Crowley and Keller, and the surrounding Dallas area. I write these because they are the questions I answer on the phone every week, and most people never get a straight answer to them. If you have one I have not covered, ask me — I will probably turn it into the next post.