On a VA loan with a decent score, a single 30-day late in the last 12 months is highly unlikely to knock you out of the automated approval. The stricter treatment of recent lates lives on the conventional side. Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's engines weigh a recent late as part of the whole risk picture, and a late there is far more likely to turn a conventional file into a Refer than to hurt a VA or FHA file. For VA specifically, a score above 640 paired with one 30-day late very rarely pushes a file to manual underwriting, and even when it does, VA lenders run manual underwrites routinely and without much added difficulty. The real trade-off of a manual underwrite is stricter limits, typically a lower maximum debt-to-income ratio and reserve requirements the automated system would never have asked for. With a 675 score and a total debt ratio (including the new house payment) comfortably under 50% on a VA loan, we would not expect one 30-day late to be a problem. FHA behaves similarly. Conventional is where it could bite. These behaviors change, so confirm current requirements for your loan type. The clean way to know is to run the actual file through the system, which is what we do on the free Roadmap conversation.