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.
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.