Veteran’s widow finds VA mortgage, tax relief to keep Michigan home
Marlene Garvey shares how refinancing her mortgage and discovering a Michigan property tax exemption helped her avoid selling her home after her husband’s death.
A Michigan widow whose husband served 21 years in the U.S. Army feared losing her lakeside home as rising expenses strained her fixed retirement income until she discovered financial benefits available to qualifying surviving military spouses.
Marlene Garvey told FOX Business refinancing her mortgage through a VA-backed loan led her to discover a Michigan property tax exemption she had not known existed, helping her remain in the home she had dreamed of living in since childhood.
Garvey said she would not have been able to remain in her home without the financial relief because rising property taxes and other expenses had become increasingly difficult to manage on her fixed income.
Garvey’s husband graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1962 and retired from the Army in 1983. He died in 1994, and Garvey attributed his death to Agent Orange exposure during his service in Vietnam.
A Michigan veteran’s widow who feared losing her lakeside home says a VA-backed mortgage refinance led her to discover a property tax exemption that helped her afford to stay. (Getty Images/stock / Getty Images)
Garvey moved to Michigan in 2004 after years of living in different locations with her husband, including Leavenworth, Kansas. The couple had spent their honeymoon near the lake where she eventually settled.
“He knew when he passed where I was going to go, but I just always thought it would be the two of us,” she said.
Retired and living on a fixed income, Garvey said she struggled to keep up with increasing housing expenses, including property taxes, while carrying a conventional mortgage.
After seeing a television advertisement for VA mortgage refinancing, she contacted Rocket Mortgage and connected with representative Sean Park, who helped her refinance into a VA-backed loan.
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Marlene Garvey, whose late husband served 21 years in the U.S. Army, discusses how a VA-backed mortgage refinance and Michigan property tax exemption helped her keep her lakeside home. (Brittany Miller/FOX Business / Fox News)
During the process, Park also identified a Michigan property tax exemption for which Garvey might qualify because of her husband’s service-connected death.
Garvey said she submitted documentation, worked with her local assessor and appeared before a three-member board before receiving approval.
Michigan provides a property tax exemption for qualifying disabled veterans and certain unremarried surviving spouses who own and occupy their homes as their primary residences, according to the Michigan Department of Treasury.
The exemption under Michigan law is separate from the federal VA home loan program….
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