VA Residual Income Chart: What You Actually Need to Qualify

The Chart First. Explanation After.

You came here for a number, so here’s the number.

This is the VA residual income chart for loan amounts of $80,000 and above — the bracket almost every Utah purchase falls into. Find your region, find your family size, and that’s the minimum dollar amount the VA wants left over every month after the bills are paid. The figures come straight from the VA’s own rulebook — the Lenders Handbook, M26-7 Chapter 4 — and are current as of August 2026; they change rarely, but your lender reads the live table on every file.

Utah is in the West region. So is Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii.

That column is the whole test. Every other loan program in America qualifies you on a percentage. The VA is the only one that checks your refrigerator — that asks, in actual dollars, whether there’s anything left after the bills. Hold onto that image, because it explains every strange thing in the rest of this page.

Now look across the table one more time and notice something: the West column is the highest number in every single row.

That’s not a typo and it’s not bad luck. It’s the VA acknowledging that a family of four buying a $597,000 house in Layton’s 84040 has a harder time on $1,003 a month than a family of four in Alabama. Utah veterans are held to the strictest residual income standard in the country — which feels unfair for about four seconds, until you realize it’s the VA protecting you from a payment you can’t actually carry.

And you’re already doing the math in your head to see if you clear your row. Everybody does. Hang on before you decide — the number you’re subtracting from probably isn’t the one the VA uses.

What Residual Income Actually Is

Residual income is the money left in your account after everything. Not after the mortgage. After everything.

Back to the refrigerator. Every other loan program in America qualifies you on debt-to-income ratio — a percentage that compares what you owe to what you earn. Useful, but a percentage doesn’t buy groceries. Two families can both sit at a tidy 38% and one of them is fine while the other is eating cereal for dinner by the 26th, because one earns $12,000 a month and the other earns $4,200.

That’s the whole idea, and it’s why this test exists alongside the ratio instead of replacing it. Debt-to-income asks what share of your income is already spoken for. Residual income asks a blunter question: on the 28th of the month, is there anything left?

If you want the ratio side of the equation too, how debt-to-income ratio works in Utah covers the math the rest of the industry runs on.

Step One: Start With Gross Income, Then Subtract Everything

To get to your residual income, a VA underwriter starts with gross monthly income and subtracts. A lot.

Out comes the full house payment — principal, interest, property taxes, homeowners insurance, and HOA dues if you’ve got them (fair, that’s the loan). Out comes every installment debt with more than ten months left, plus the minimum payment on every revolving account (also fair). Out comes federal, state and local income tax, along with Social Security and any retirement contributions (so we’re using take-home, essentially, which is honest). Out comes child care (sure). Out come unreimbursed job expenses (getting specific now). And then, finally, out comes a maintenance and utilities estimate the VA calculates at 14 cents per square foot of living space, whether or not that resembles your actual power bill (fourteen cents. per square foot. Somebody, somewhere, defended that decimal in a meeting.).

That last one surprises people, so run it once: a 1,500-square-foot rambler in Layton gets charged $210 a month. A 2,400-square-foot house in Herriman gets charged $336. Same family, same income — the bigger house costs you $126 a month of residual income before you’ve turned on a single light.

Which means square footage is a qualifying factor on a VA loan. Nobody explains this in advance.

Step Two: Check Your Ratio Against 41%

There are two ways this test plays out. Neither of them is a door slamming.

If your debt-to-income ratio is 41% or below and you clear the residual income minimum for your region and family size, you’re on the clean path. That’s the standard.

If your ratio goes above 41%, the VA doesn’t slam the door — it asks for proof. Most lenders want to see residual income exceeding the minimum by at least 20%. For a family of four in Utah, that means the $1,117 minimum becomes a $1,340 target. Clear that, and exceeding 41% becomes a documented compensating factor rather than a problem.

This is genuinely good news, and it’s the reason VA borrowers get approved at ratios that would end a conventional application. Buying a house with a high DTI in Utah goes deeper on what else counts as a compensating factor.

A flat opinion, since I have one: residual income is the smartest qualifying rule in American mortgage lending, and every other loan program should have copied it thirty years ago. A percentage tells you how leveraged someone is. A dollar amount tells you whether they can live.

Step Three: Count Your Family — All of It

Go back and check the row you picked. This is where the VA residual income chart quietly costs people an approval, because “family size” is not the same as “people on the loan.”

Your family size includes you, your spouse — even if they’re not a borrower and never touch the application — every dependent child under 18, every dependent 18 to 23 in full-time school, and anyone else you’re legally obligated to support.

A married veteran with two kids is a family of four. Not a family of one because they’re the only one on the note. That’s a $626 swing in the requirement, and it’s the single most common reason a borrower’s own math doesn’t match their lender’s.

Count carefully before you get attached to a house. Totally normal to have gotten this wrong — most people do.

Step Four: If You’re Short, You Have Moves

Coming in under the number isn’t the end of it. Take a breath — it’s a math problem, and math problems have levers.

Pay off a short-term installment debt. Anything with ten months or fewer left already drops out of the calculation — but killing a car loan with 14 months remaining removes that whole payment from the subtraction column, and that’s often the fastest few hundred dollars available.

Look at a smaller square footage. Yes, really. Fourteen cents adds up, and the smaller house usually costs less in every other line too.

Bring your rate down. A lower payment is a higher residual, dollar for dollar, and that’s exactly what shopping the loan across many lenders is for.

Check your disability rating. VA disability compensation is non-taxable income, and it can be grossed up in qualifying — which moves residual income meaningfully. If you have a rating, how a VA disability rating affects your loan in Utah is worth ten minutes.

And if you’re still weighing programs, VA versus FHA loans in Utah lays the two side by side, while our full VA loan page covers entitlement, the funding fee and the zero-down structure.

The Test Nobody Thanks Them For

It’s worth sitting with what this rule is actually doing.

Somewhere in the 1940s, someone building the VA loan program decided that a percentage wasn’t a good enough answer to the question can this family afford this house, and wrote a second test that measures cash instead of ratios. It has been quietly turning down loans that looked fine on paper ever since. Nobody sends thank-you notes for a denial. But a lot of veterans have kept their homes through a bad year because a stranger with a calculator insisted there be $1,117 left over, and there was.

Most rules in this industry exist to protect the lender. This one was built to protect you.

What This Should Feel Like

A veteran who earned this benefit shouldn’t have to guess whether the loan they qualified for will leave them enough to live on — and they definitely shouldn’t find out the answer in month seven. The chart exists. The math is knowable. Somebody should just run it with you, out loud, before you fall for a house.

Your Guide Through the Numbers

At ClearPath Utah Mortgage, we’ll run your residual income before you’re emotionally invested in a floor plan, not after.

We communicate constantly, so you’ll always know exactly where your file stands and what it needs next. We explain the math in plain English — you’ll see the subtraction, line by line, including the fourteen-cent thing. And as brokers we shop hundreds of lenders to find your best rate with some of the lowest fees in Utah, which on a VA loan means a lower payment, which means more left in the fridge.

Call (801) 891-1846 or email [email protected], and bring your family size. All of it.

The rates, payments, down payment percentages and program figures on this page are illustrative examples for educational purposes. They are not an offer of credit, a rate quote, or a commitment to lend. Actual terms depend on loan amount, loan-to-value, term, credit profile, occupancy and property type, and are subject to change. Program figures accurate as of August 2026.

ClearPath Utah Mortgage, NMLS #2510508. Equal Housing Lender.

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