Behind on Your VA Loan? How the New Partial Claim Works, and Why Your Servicer May Not Offer It Until November 28

The VA reopened its main foreclosure-prevention tool on June 15, 2026, after a gap of roughly 13 months in which more than 10,000 veterans lost homes to foreclosure sales. If you are behind on a VA-guaranteed mortgage today, the timing matters as much as the program itself: your servicer may not be able to process a partial claim yet, and it has until November 28, 2026, to build the capability.

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In this article (Skip to...)

• How the VA Partial Claim Program replaced VASP
• How a VA partial claim works
• What to ask your servicer before the November 28 deadline

How the VA Partial Claim Program replaced VASP

Until spring of last year, a veteran in deep default had a backstop called VASP, the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program. Under VASP, the VA (the Department of Veterans Affairs) bought the defaulted loan out of the servicer’s hands and restructured it. The VA ended that program in May 2025 and left borrowers with a thinner set of options for about a year.

The replacement came from Congress. The VA Home Loan Program Reform Act was signed into law on July 30, 2025. The VA updated its Servicer Handbook effective June 1, 2026, then opened the new Partial Claim Program to servicer submissions on June 15, 2026.

Here are some terms you’ll need to understand if you’re looking into this:

Partial claim

A partial claim is money advanced to cure the payments you missed. Your servicer, the company that collects your monthly payment, first puts you on a three-month trial payment plan. Make those three payments on time, and the servicer advances the funds to bring your loan current, then gets reimbursed by the VA.

In exchange, you sign a subordinate lien, a second legal claim against your home that sits behind your first mortgage. That balance carries no interest and no monthly payment. You repay it when you sell the home, refinance, or otherwise pay off the first mortgage.

Loss mitigation

Loss mitigation is the ordered set of options a servicer must review before it can foreclose. The VA rebuilt that sequence this year and placed the partial claim at step five in the waterfall, ahead of a 40-year loan modification.

Forbearance

Forbearance is a temporary pause or reduction in payments, and the VA also created an informal forbearance and repayment-plan track that sits ahead of the full waterfall for short-term hardship.

Military.com reports the advance can cover up to 25 percent of your unpaid principal balance, rising to 30 percent for payments missed during the COVID-era window, between March 1, 2020 and May 1, 2025. The amount needed to bring the loan current can include missed principal and interest plus, where applicable, past-due property taxes, homeowners insurance premiums, and HOA dues.

How a VA partial claim works

The part borrowers most often get wrong is that a partial claim is not forgiveness. Let’s look at an example.

Say you are $12,000 behind on a loan with a $280,000 balance. The 25 percent ceiling puts roughly $70,000 on the table, so the arrearage fits with room to spare. After three on-time trial payments, that $12,000 gets advanced, your loan is current, and you sign a $12,000 zero-interest second lien to the VA. Nothing is due monthly. Sell the house four years later, and the $12,000 comes out of your proceeds after the first mortgage is satisfied. The debt did not disappear. It moved, and it stopped growing.

That has real consequences for later moves. A VA lien in second position has to be addressed when you refinance or sell, which changes your equity math and can complicate a VA streamline refinance. Worth knowing before you assume a partial claim leaves your file untouched.

There is a fair criticism of the program worth hearing. VASP took the loan itself and reworked it. A partial claim only cures the arrears; your underlying monthly payment stays exactly where it was. If your payment was affordable before a job loss or a deployment-related income drop and you have recovered, the partial claim fits. If the payment itself is the problem, a loan modification, which changes the terms of the loan, is the lane you actually need. See the VA foreclosure-avoidance options for delinquent VA borrowers.

The transition damage is not hypothetical. NPR, using data from ICE Mortgage Technology, found more than 10,000 veterans lost homes through foreclosure sales after VASP ended, with roughly 90,000 more behind on payments or somewhere in the foreclosure process.

What to ask your servicer before the November 28 deadline

Servicers could begin submitting partial claims on June 15, and every servicer must be fully compliant by November 28. Any answer you get before then depends on which servicer holds your loan.

The most damaging misconception in this situation is the belief that “my servicer said no, so I have no options.” A no in 2026 often means the system is not built yet, not that you failed to qualify. The rest of the waterfall still applies to you today. Forbearance, a repayment plan, and a modification are all live while the partial claim comes online.

When you call your servicer’s loss mitigation department, ask these four questions:

1. Are you accepting partial claim submissions yet, and if not, on what date?
2. Which loss mitigation options am I being evaluated for right now?
3. Where am I in the waterfall?
4. Will you send that in writing?

If the answers are vague or the foreclosure clock keeps running, VA loan technicians can engage with your servicer directly. The number is 877-827-3702, option 6, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern. They help veterans with VA loans and, in many cases, veterans with non-VA loans as well.

One more thread worth watching. On May 26, 2026, Rep. Chris Pappas and 27 colleagues sent a letter asking the VA to impose a targeted foreclosure moratorium until the Partial Claim Program is fully operational, requesting a written response by June 2. No moratorium has been established. Track it if your case is active, but do not build a plan around relief that does not exist yet.

The program is real, the money is real, and the subordinate lien is real. What is not yet uniform is access, and that gap closes on November 28, 2026. Until then, the veterans who keep their homes will mostly be the ones who called early, asked for the waterfall by name, and got the answers in writing.