Can You Buy a 100-Year-Old House With a VA Loan? — Liberty, MO

Yes — And Here Is Exactly How It Went on a 1920 Bungalow in Liberty

Yes, you can buy a 100-year-old house with a VA loan. In June 2026 a veteran and his family used VA financing to buy a bungalow in Liberty, Missouri — built in 1920, one hundred and six years old at closing. They paid over the asking price, the seller paid some of their closing costs, and they did it over multiple competing offers. The house went under contract seven days after it came on the market and closed on July 6, 2026.

The age of the house was never the obstacle, because a VA appraiser is not grading a home on its birthday. The appraiser is checking whether the roof has life left in it, whether the wiring and the furnace are safe and working, whether there is clean water and a working sewer, and whether the paint is intact on a home built before 1978. On this house, every one of those systems was new.

Here is how the deal actually went, start to finish.

The Full Story

A veteran and his family, first-time buyers, came to Josh Seitz with a plain problem. They had a budget they were not willing to break and a list of things they actually needed in a house, and Liberty was not making that easy. Good homes in their range were going under contract in under a week.

In a market like that, older housing stock is where the value hides. It is also where most VA buyers get talked out of looking. The advice circulating online is that VA loans and old houses do not mix — that the appraisal will find something, that a seller will take a conventional offer just to avoid the paperwork, that a 1920 house is a waste of a pre-approval. Some of that is out of date and some of it was never true, but it gets repeated often enough that veterans skip entire neighborhoods over it.

The house came on the market June 2, 2026. It is a three-bedroom, two-full-bath bungalow on a treed lot a few blocks from William Jewell College and a short walk from Liberty’s historic downtown square. On paper it was 106 years old. In practice the sellers had spent three years rebuilding it: new wiring and electrical, new drywall, a new HVAC system, a new roof, upgraded Hardy concrete siding, blown insulation, Low-E windows and doors, and a tankless water heater. Inside, quartz counters with a waterfall edge, soft-close custom cabinets, stainless appliances, a vaulted primary suite with a walk-in closet, and a tiled walk-in shower.

That combination — old house, new systems — is the exact thing that makes a VA loan straightforward instead of difficult. It is also why the house drew multiple offers in its first week.

The Strategy

Josh’s approach was unglamorous and it worked. When a house came up that fit what the family was after, he got them inside it that day rather than losing forty-eight hours to scheduling. In a market where the good listings were gone inside a week, showing speed was the whole advantage.

When the house hit the list, the family wrote a VA offer over asking, with a short, clean timeline and a request that the seller cover part of their closing costs.

That structure is the part buyers get wrong most often. Asking a seller to pay closing costs does not make an offer weak. It lowers the seller’s net, which any listing agent can calculate in about ten seconds, so nobody is being fooled by the headline number. What the seller was actually buying with that closing-cost credit was certainty: a buyer who was fully pre-approved, who was not going to come back and renegotiate, and who would close on a date they could plan a move around.

The question the family kept coming back to was the appraisal. Would a VA appraiser come apart on a house built in 1920? The answer is in what the appraiser is actually required to check. VA Minimum Property Requirements are a habitability standard, not a preservation standard — safe electrical and mechanical systems, a roof with remaining life, adequate permanent heat, safe water and sewage disposal, access to the crawl space, and no defective paint surfaces on a home built before 1978. A 1920 bungalow with new wiring, a new furnace, a new roof and new siding clears that list more comfortably than plenty of houses built in the 1990s. That is how it went on this house; your lender and the appraiser assigned to your purchase make the call on yours.

The Success

The offer was accepted on June 9, 2026 — seven days after the house came on the market — over multiple competing offers. It closed on July 6, 2026, twenty-seven days later, on VA financing.

Final terms: a purchase price over asking, seller-paid closing costs, VA financing. Net of that credit the seller took less than list, so this was not a case of the biggest number winning a bidding war. The listing agent could see the net as clearly as anyone could. What won it was everything around the number — a fully underwritten buyer, a short timeline, and no terms that were going to move later.

And the part that does not show up on an MLS sheet: a veteran and his family own a rebuilt house two blocks from a college campus and a walkable downtown, bought inside the budget they refused to break.

In Their Own Words

They posted this publicly on Google after closing. Nobody asked them to.

About This Property

The home is a 1920 bungalow in the City Blocks addition of Liberty, Missouri: three bedrooms, two full baths, on a treed lot, with a covered front porch, off-street parking, a crawl space and no HOA.

The sellers’ three-year renovation covered wiring, electrical, drywall, HVAC, roof and Hardy concrete siding, with blown insulation, Low-E windows and doors and a tankless water heater. The listing was held by Exit Realty Professionals; Nelson Home Group represented the buyer. More on the area: Living in Liberty, MO →

Living in Liberty, Missouri

Liberty is the county seat of Clay County, roughly twenty minutes northeast of downtown Kansas City. Its historic square is a working downtown of independent shops and restaurants, and William Jewell College, founded in 1849, sits a few blocks north of it. The streets around the square are largely early-twentieth-century housing stock, which is exactly why the renovated ones move fast. The address is served by the Liberty Public School District. If you are weighing Liberty against the rest of the Northland, our Liberty agent page has more on how the market here actually behaves.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you buy a 100-year-old house with a VA loan?

Yes. The VA does not set a maximum age for a home. What it sets is a condition standard — Minimum Property Requirements — that the house has to meet at the time of appraisal. A 1920 house in good repair qualifies; a 2005 house with a failing roof may not. In June 2026 a veteran family used VA financing to buy a 1920 bungalow in Liberty, Missouri, over asking and over multiple competing offers.

What does a VA appraiser actually look for on an older home?

In general terms: safe and functional electrical and mechanical systems, a roof with remaining useful life, adequate permanent heat, safe drinking water and sewage disposal, access to the crawl space or attic, and no defective paint surfaces on a home built before 1978. The appraiser is judging whether the home is safe, structurally sound and sanitary — not whether it is new. We are Realtors, not the VA: your lender and the appraiser assigned to your purchase make the determination on a specific property.

Does a house built before 1978 create a lead paint problem for a VA loan?

It can, and it is the question buyers have the hardest time getting a straight answer to. On a home built before 1978, VA appraisers flag defective paint surfaces — chipping, peeling, flaking — and those generally have to be corrected before closing. Intact paint on an older home is usually not the issue; deteriorated paint is. On a house that has been repainted during a renovation it often does not come up at all. If a house you are considering has visible paint failure, raise it with your lender before you write the offer rather than after.

Can you ask for seller-paid closing costs and still win a multiple-offer situation?

Yes, and this purchase is an example. The family offered over the asking price and asked the seller to pay part of their closing costs. The seller could see the net perfectly well, under list, and accepted anyway, because the offer came with a fully approved buyer, a short timeline and no conditions likely to move. In a competitive situation a seller is buying certainty as much as price. More on the four realistic ways a veteran covers those costs: VA loan closing costs in Kansas City.

Do sellers actually accept VA offers when there are other offers on the table?

Some listing agents still assume a VA offer is slower or more fragile than a conventional one, and that assumption costs veterans houses. The way past it is not to hide the loan type. It is to make the rest of the offer impossible to worry about: underwriting done up front, a realistic and short timeline, and a buyer’s agent who tells the listing agent exactly what happens and when. That is what happened here, and the VA offer won.

How long does a VA loan take to close?

It depends on the lender, the appraisal queue and the property. This purchase went from an accepted offer on June 9, 2026 to closing on July 6, 2026 — twenty-seven days, including the VA appraisal.

Is a renovated older home a better VA buy than a newer one?

It depends on what was renovated. What matters for a VA appraisal is the condition of the systems — roof, electrical, heat, plumbing, water heater, structure. A century-old house where all of those have been replaced can present better than a thirty-year-old house where none of them have. Cosmetic renovation without system work does not carry the same weight, and that is the distinction to ask about before you write an offer on an older home.

How fast are homes selling in Liberty, Missouri?

It depends on price point and condition. This Liberty bungalow went under contract in seven days with multiple offers in June 2026. Move-in-ready homes in Liberty’s established neighborhoods have generally been the fastest movers, and homes needing work sit longer. For current numbers in a specific price range, ask us.

Can a first-time buyer use a VA loan on an older home?

Yes. This family were first-time buyers, and their VA loan closed on a 106-year-old house. VA does not require prior homeownership or a separate first-time buyer program. The benefit itself is what makes a first purchase workable, with no down payment required on most purchases and no monthly mortgage insurance. On an older home the questions are about condition, not experience, and that is where a buyer’s agent who has closed VA deals earns their keep. The VA Home Buying Guide covers the basics for a first VA purchase.

Buying a century-old house with a VA loan is not the long shot it gets made out to be. It comes down to the condition of the house, an offer built so the seller does not have to guess, and an agent who can get you through the door before the house is gone. If you want the benefit explained end to end, start with The VA Home Buying Guide or our resources for veterans and military families.

More VA and military stories from our team: Can you use a VA loan on a multi-million dollar home? · Buying a home in Kansas City while stationed overseas · Selling a home bought with a VA loan. And from Liberty specifically: what to do when a home’s sale fell through before you made an offer.

Nelson Home Group works with veterans and VA buyers across the Northland and the wider Kansas City metro. Joe Nelson spent 21 years in the Air Force before he sold a single house. Call 816-680-6624 or reach the team here.

Joe Nelson · Nelson Home Group · 1508 NW Vivion Rd #205, Kansas City, MO 64118 · 816-680-6624
Brokerage: Keller Williams KC North · 816-452-4200

Another buyer-side story from our team: do you need your own agent when you buy a new construction home? — a custom build in Weston, Missouri, nearly eleven months from contract to keys.

Another veteran buyer story from our team: using a VA loan on a downtown Kansas City condo the first search said was not approved.

And one more: a VA offer that won on a Cameron, MO listing marked cash or conventional, under list price, closed 33 days after contract.