I am old enough to remember how the soldiers returning from Vietnam were “welcomed” home: They weren’t. Their families were happy they were back, for sure. But the war was unpopular, to say the least, and society did not seem to care about America’s returning troops.

Fast-forward 50 years or so, and the sentiment is totally different. Now, the country can’t seem to do enough for our fighting heroes. And that includes the housing sector.

Service members and veterans have been eligible for low- and no-down-payment mortgages since 1944, when Congress enacted the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, aka the GI Bill, to help soldiers and sailors returning from World War II. Specifically, VA-direct and VA-backed mortgages allow vets, current service members and their survivors to buy, build or improve a house. Borrowers still need to meet credit and income standards, but the loans' terms may be better than those of other mortgages. One popular perk: financing with nothing down.

Some 28 million service members have taken advantage of their housing benefits to date, the lion’s share opting for the nothing-down option. In 2021, a record 1.4 million loans were guaranteed by the VA.

Some states and localities also offer housing benefits to their soldiers and sailors. Down Payment Resource keeps tabs on all types of homebuyer assistance programs, from those offering help with first or second mortgages to those that pay some or all of the borrower’s closing costs.

DPR counts dozens of such initiatives in 25 states. While most of those states offer one or two assistance programs each, some go beyond that: California has 10 programs, for example, and Georgia has seven. Some are aimed at first-time buyers, but others waive that requirement for vets and military personnel.

For the most part, assistance takes the form of grants that need not be paid back -- "true gifts," Sean Moss of DPR told me.

Better yet, the state and local benefits can be combined with assistance programs offered by other sources. Even if you are taking out a nothing-down VA loan, you may be able to use the programs to buy down your interest rate, cover some of your closing costs or pay the VA’s funding fee at closing, rather than as part of your monthly payment.

The Ohio Housing Finance Agency’s Ohio Heroes is a first-mortgage program that features financing at a discounted interest rate that can be applied to all government-backed loans. And Florida’s Hometown Heroes program provides down payment and closing cost assistance of 5% of the loan amount, up to $35,000, as well as reduced upfront fees.

Back at the national level, the VA’s housing initiatives come with other benefits that even many real estate professionals don’t know about. For instance, military people can use their VA loan eligibility more than once, writes Jo Garner, a loan officer in Tennessee, in a piece for RealtyTimes.com.

Say, for example, that your VA entitlement is $40,000. If you used only $20,000 of that to buy your first house, you still have $20,000 left for another VA loan. You can also have more than one VA loan at a time.

Garner also points out that VA loans are not solely for detached houses. As long as the borrower lives in one unit, they can buy a duplex, a triplex or even a quadraplex. “You can buy a multi-unit property, live in one unit and rent the other units,” she says. “In many cases, the rent from the other tenants can more than cover your mortgage payment.”

Your favorable VA mortgage can also be assumed, or taken over, by any buyer of your house when it is time to sell, as long as the buyer qualifies. Moreover, if the buyer is a veteran, you can have your entitlement to another VA loan restored as long as they agree to substitute their entitlement for yours.

Meanwhile, private outfits -- some on their own, some in league with charitable groups like Homes For Our Troops -- are building and donating specially adapted custom houses for warriors who came home with life-altering injuries. HFOT has helped hundreds of injured vets so far.

Unfortunately, some of the 16.2 million U.S. military vets aren’t so lucky. Indeed, far too many are experiencing homelessness. But they are not being overlooked: The VA has permanently housed more than 35,000 homeless vets so far this year, and is on track to exceed its goal of 38,000.

Toward that end, the VA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development are holding workshop “Boot Camps” in each of HUD’s 10 regions to help veterans more quickly move from the streets to permanent housing. The two-day sessions were designed to help public housing authorities and VA medical centers streamline and improve their processes, quickly getting vets the housing and services they need.

More recently, the two departments awarded $16.1 million in vouchers to 71 public housing agencies to help homeless vets and their families find affordable rental housing.

There are still far too many veterans out there without a roof over their heads -- an estimated 33,000-plus. But thanks to these and other efforts, the number of homeless veterans fell by 11% between 2020 and 2022 -- the largest decline in five years.

The common wisdom is that would-be homebuyers on the lower end of the credit spectrum will benefit the most from improving their credit scores -- those all-important snapshots in time of how people use their credit.

But that’s not the case, according to number-crunching company CreditXpert, which claims that most people who apply for a mortgage can raise their scores by 20 points -- and do so within 30 days.

Most lenders accept credit scores as static figures. They're not, though -- they are dynamic, says Mike Darne, vice president of marketing at CreditXpert. Lenders should look at every applicant’s score "not for what it is," he says, "but for what it could be."

So should borrowers, for that matter.

CreditXpert found that 65% of a representative sample of people who bought homes in the last six months, or who intended to buy in the next six, were never given the opportunity to improve their credit scores. Out of those who were given the chance, 7 out of 10 took steps to do so, and the main reason was to save money.

How much money you can save varies, of course. But in one example, a woman raised her score by 40 points, earning her a lower rate from her lender and trimming her principal-and-interest payment by $158 a month. She also saved $131 on mortgage insurance, for a total of $289 a month.

Just for taking rudimentary steps to raise her credit score, she'll save tens of thousands of dollars over the 30-year term of her $400,000 mortgage.

Credit is just one of the three C's lenders look at when deciding whether to provide financing to someone. The other two are capacity, or your ability to repay the loan, and collateral, which is the value of the property you're buying.

But credit, Darne points out, is the only one over which you have any control. You can’t very well boost your income instantaneously, and you certainly can’t raise the value of the house you are buying. But you can raise your credit score -- sometimes enough to make a real difference.

To do so, there are numerous steps you can take. First, go over your credit report to search for errors and have them expunged. Credit reports are often riddled with mistakes, such as accounts that don’t belong to you or paid-off loans that are described as still active -- or worse, as delinquent.

Another step: Don’t utilize more than 35% of your maximum credit allocation. For example, if you could max out all your credit cards to a total of $10,000, keep your combined balances below $3,500. That will show that you know how to handle credit. And always be on time with your payments, of course.

Some actions in the world of credit scores seem counterintuitive or contradictory. For instance: In general, you shouldn't apply for any credit that you don't need. But in some cases, it may help your score to take out a new credit card. Likewise, paying off your balances and debts is a good thing -- most of the time. Paying off an old debt could actually be detrimental because the action will render it a "new" item on your report, which will be counted against you. So it may be better to just leave it alone.

These steps can be tough to navigate, and may not even be helpful in the short term. But CreditXpert is testing a credit optimization tool that anyone can use to determine what (if anything) they can do to boost their credit score and lower their mortgage costs.

After answering a few questions about the anticipated purchase price and loan amount, the system will check your credit file and use predictive analytics to identify what you might do to meaningfully bump your score. Then, it will send you to a lender who can use the tool to produce a step-by-step plan to help you reach your potential.

Optimizing your credit won’t come without a cost. But in the long run, your savings could be substantial.

In the example above, the woman who raised her score by 40 points would have to spend $2,810 -- maybe through paying off a credit card or two, or paying down other accounts -- to take her score from 640 to 680. But her monthly payment would be $289 lower, so in just 10 months, she would recoup her out-of-pocket costs.

By the way, credit optimization should not be confused with credit counseling or credit repair. Whereas optimization leverages sophisticated data science and predictive analytics to look for short-term opportunities, credit counseling is usually a longer-term process. Those interested should seek out face-to-face counseling platforms run by legitimate organizations.

"Credit repair" is another story altogether. Buyer beware: The Federal Trade Commission has brought numerous actions against so-called credit repair services, and has partnered with some states to bring hundreds of additional lawsuits. Many of these charlatans take your money but do little, if anything, to help with your credit.

Attaching a check to the offer on a house you hope to purchase is the right way to signal your intentions to the seller. The larger the check, the more serious the buyer.

But putting up earnest money is not without risk. If you don’t abide by the contract you and the seller sign, you could end up forfeiting the entire amount.

Margaret Goss, an agent in Winnetka, Illinois, has had only one client lose their earnest money, but it was a doozy. Goss commented -- on an ActiveRain article on the topic, written by Massachusetts agent Bill Gassett of RE/MAX Executive Realty -- that when closing day came for this client, they backed out. The reason? “The market was changing and they felt they had paid too much," said Goss. "They lost a bundle.”

More on that in a moment. First, some basics.

Earnest money isn’t the same as a down payment. A down payment is the amount lenders require borrowers to put into the transactions up-front so that the bank can feel secure in financing the balance of the home’s cost. In other words, if you bring, say, 10% of the purchase price to the closing table, the lender will hand over the other 90%.

In contrast, earnest money is a sign of good faith to the seller. It tells the seller you intend to move forward. It can range from as little as $500 in some markets to several thousand in others, and usually increases when competition for houses is strong.

Your earnest money can be rolled into the down payment when you sit down at closing -- but it also can be lost if you fail to reach that point. You have to follow the letter of the contract. And timing is everything -- especially when it comes to any contingencies written into the document.

Contingency clauses protect both buyer and seller. But the more contingencies, the greater the possibility of the deal falling through. So in competitive markets where houses are flying off the proverbial shelves, some buyers are forgoing home inspections and other protections in order to present sellers as clean a deal as possible.

It always behooves buyers to protect themselves against unforeseen circumstances, but contingencies can cause trouble if you run out of time. Most real estate contracts include timelines that must be adhered to by both buyer and seller.

Take the home inspection clause, for example. Usually, the number of days you have to order the inspection and receive a complete report of the findings is agreed to by both parties and written into the contract.

If the inspector finds defects you don’t want to deal with, you can back out of the purchase and your earnest money will be returned. Here, advises Gassett in his ActiveRain post, you should notify the seller that you want out, in writing, prior to the expiration of the inspection contingency.

If you miss the deadline, either because the inspection wasn’t completed in time or because you failed to notify the seller that you are no longer interested, the seller can keep your deposit.

The same holds true for the mortgage contingency. Cash buyers don’t have to worry about this, but most people need financing, so they write into the contract how many days they have to secure a loan. Sometimes, a maximum interest rate is also specified.

That’s one reason smart buyers get themselves preapproved by a lender -- not just prequalified, but preapproved for a loan up to a certain amount. Then, when they find a place they want, they can move quickly. But again, if you miss the deadline -- or fail to tell the seller in writing that you are unable to secure a loan -- you can lose your deposit.

The seller can grant a mortgage extension if you want to keep hunting for a lender, but Gassett suggests getting that permission in writing.

Another contingency to keep in mind involves the appraisal. This protection allows you to walk away if the selling price turns out to be more than what the appraiser says the property is worth. Like the others, this contingency comes with a timeline.

If, during the post-contract, pre-closing period, you simply change your mind about the house, you can sometimes use one of the above contingencies to back out of the deal. If the seller is holding backup contracts just in case your deal falls through, or if other buyers are knocking on their door, they will probably let you skate.

But if you can’t demonstrate a good reason for changing your mind, they could hang on to your earnest money. After all, they've probably taken the house off the market and missed showing the place to other interested parties.

Now the lawyers become involved, and that could tie up your money for months -- money that you might need to put up for another house. So read your contract closely and follow it carefully.

One last word on earnest money, which also applies to deposits on new-build homes: Make certain the money is held in a dedicated escrow account. Some financially strapped homebuilders have mingled customers' deposits with their own operating funds -- and when the businesses went under, the money was gone.