The Department of Veterans Affairs will continue removing barriers to delivering home-loan benefits to veterans and service members in 2015, focusing more on further improvements in appraisal and servicing. “It’s going to be geared around improving on the things we have already done,” said Mike Frueh, director of the VA Home Loan Guaranty program. VA loan originations are on the upswing and the agency wants to maintain the trend by getting more vets and active-duty personnel into the program. Last year, 18 percent of VA loans were to active-duty service members and 82 percent to veterans. Frueh said the VA program is by far the better deal. Interest rates are lower on a VA loan than on conventional loans and, generally requires no downpayment, he noted. In addition, VA loans do not have mortgage insurance. Based on the volume of VA loans originated in 2014, veteran borrowers ...