Veterans United #1 Thanks to Large Home Purchase Share

If you’re curious who the top VA loan lenders were last year, wonder no longer. The biggest was Veterans United Home Loans.

The Columbia, Missouri-based lender wrestled the lead away from Freedom Mortgage, a direct lender out of Boca Raton, Florida that had topped the list for two years prior.

United Wholesale Mortgage took second, followed by Rocket Mortgage, though both were behind by a large margin.

Dropping to fourth was Freedom Mortgage, followed by Navy Federal FCU rounding out the top five.

Read on to see the rest of the largest VA loan lenders in the country.

Top VA Loan Lenders in 2022

As noted, Veterans United Home Loans was the #1 VA loan lender in the country in 2022, per statistics from the VA for fiscal year 2022.

The company originated over $26.5 billion in VA loans, which was easily more than the rest of the bunch.

In fact, the home purchase specialist held a near-$10 billion cushion above second place UWM.

But the numbers pale in comparison to 2021, when Freedom originated a staggering $59.6 billion in VA loans.

Interestingly, Veterans United saw their production drop minimally from $28.6 billion a year earlier, a testament to their focus on home purchase lending.

Meanwhile, many of the others saw big declines as mortgage rates doubled from sub-3% levels to 6%+.

The lower half of the top 10 included Pennymac, loanDepot, USAA, Caliber Home Loans, and Fairway Independent.

Top VA Purchase Lenders

Now let’s take a look at the top VA purchase lenders, those who originated the most VA loans for home buyers.

These lenders helped military customers become homeowners, as opposed to assisting them with an existing mortgage.

The list is quite a bit different, with Veterans United Home Loans easily taking the top spot for at least the six year in a row, well ahead of UWM and Navy Federal Credit Union.

You’ll notice that Freedom Mortgage and Pennymac didn’t even make the list, but home builder D.R. Horton’s financing division DHI Mortgage did.

This makes sense because some mortgage lenders focus more on purchases, especially a home builder financing unit.

By the way, if you do buy a new home, be sure to compare options beyond the home builder’s financing department as well!

This is similar to checking out auto loan financing outside the dealership, which could be considerably better.

Top VA Refinance Lenders (IRRRL)

If you already have a VA loan, the lenders above are the most likely to help you with a streamline refinance, also known as an IRRRL.

There is where Freedom Mortgage shines, and it’s a huge chunk of what they do, accounting for more than half of their overall business.

You can thank the low mortgage rates that have been available for several years now.

Now that interest rates have gone up considerably, these lenders have taken a huge hit. For perspective, in 2021 Freedom did over $56 billion in IRRRLs!

Because they didn’t pivot to purchase lending, we have a new largest VA lender as a result, which I correctly predicted to be Veterans United a year ago.

This sector of VA lending has taken the brunt of the higher mortgage rates.

Top VA Cash Out Refinance Lenders

Last but not least, we have the top VA cash out lenders, those who help existing owners tap equity.

And let’s face it, there’s a whole lot of home equity out there at the moment. It was very ripe for the taking last year with mortgage rates still near record lows.

This is no longer the case, but Rocket Mortgage still managed to grow their production from 2021.

The nation’s number one lender overall cranked out $10.4 billion in VA cash out refis to top this list in 2022, up from $7.2 billion a year earlier.

Rocket has been the top VA cash out lender for at least the past six years, per VA data.

And they got there by a large margin, almost doubling the volume of their nearest competitor, UWM, which managed decent volume considering it came through the wholesale channel only.

Third on the list was Freedom Mortgage, which recouped some of its IRRRL losses via a boost in cash out production.

Southern California-based loanDepot snagged fourth, followed by Navy Federal FCU.

New Day Financial, which runs lots of commercials on TV under the NewDay USA brand, came in sixth, followed by Pennymac in seventh.

The Federal Savings Bank, Veterans United, and Homepoint rounded out the top 10 in the cash out category.

The Biggest VA Lenders Aren’t Necessarily the Best

I’ve highlighted some of the largest VA lenders out there, but size isn’t necessarily synonymous with the best service, or the lowest interest rates.

Just because a company does more business than another doesn’t mean they’re superior. It just means they either advertise a lot or have more resources available to them.

Of course, it’s possible to be the best as well if they happen to top the customer satisfaction rankings at the same time.

Be sure to put in the time to comparison shop by reading reviews for these lenders and others that didn’t make a top-10 list.

You may find that the best VA home loan lender is a local shop, small credit union, or even an individual mortgage broker that provides excellent customer service and product knowledge.

Remember, once your loan funds it often doesn’t really matter who made it. And in many cases, it will be transferred to a new loan servicer anyway.

(Data source: VA.gov)