It’s our mission to connect the military community with trusted housing and resources. We want to make sure the comprehensive military housing resource we’ve created is both accessible and easy to use.
Here’s your chance to make sure you are taking advantage of all that AHRN has to offer! Don’t miss out on powerful military housing search tools and moving resources that will save you money and time while making your next Permanent Change of Station (PCS) a breeze!
Before you read any of these tips, your first step is to sign up on AHRN. It’s easy and, more importantly, free! Signing up allows you to utilize your user profile, which provides customized search results for your next local move or PCS.
Filling out all of your move or PCS details in your user profile helps AHRN generate only the properties that meet your needs and preferences, saving you time and making the process stress-free. It’s our pleasure to help you find the home of your dreams.
If you like to see everything a certain area has to offer, don’t worry; you can browse all listings too!
If your home search is kicking into high gear, getting a handle on each of these search tools will make you a home search power user!
- Home Searching as a Couple
- AHRN PCS Emails
- Calculate Your New BAH
- Utilize BAH Searches and RentSmart
- Discover Your Dream Home on Your Homepage
- Save Your Favorite Homes
- Map Your Favorites for an In-Person Home Tour or to Compare Listings
- Search on the Go With AHRN
- Organize your PCS With Our Printable PCS Toolkit
- Discover the Local Business Directory
- Plug into the Military Community with Helpful Tips
Home Searching As A Couple
Here at AHRN, we know there are multiple perspectives at play when you are searching for new military housing. We’ve created a feature that allows couples to share a login and save their personal favorites separately. This is to help you narrow down your choices!
This feature is called “Adding An Additional User” under the primary user’s account. To add someone, you (the primary user) need to invite their spouse/partner to join them in using AHRN, which is located under My Account. Each person will log in with their separate accounts, but have convenient joint access to favorites, saved searches and messages.
AHRN PCS Emails
Whether you are PCSing or simply moving locally, you’ll automatically receive PCS emails that are tailored with every stage of your move in mind when you register and input your “Move Date” and your “Installation” in your AHRN account.
Receive local information, checklists, useful PCS tools and reminders about important, time-sensitive moving tasks. With this feature, you can avoid spending hours searching for the information you need because it will all be sent straight to your inbox!
Note: Your “Move Date” must be at least 90 days before you will receive all of the PCS Emails. The emails are sent at 90, 60 and 30-day intervals prior to your designated move date.
Determine Your BAH
We know that your Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) is essential to figuring out where you will live next. That’s why we’ve made it easier for you to determine your BAH! To receive an accurate BAH rate for your new location or grade, make sure your AHRN account is properly filled out.
You’ll be asked to provide information about your new Installation, grade and dependent status. At that time, you’ll find that your AHRN dashboard will update based on the accurate information you provided.
More Like This: Ready to get started on planning your next Permanent Change of Station (PCS)? Review our Complete PCS Guide with Tips to begin!
Utilize BAH Searches and RentSmart
Have you ever fallen in love with the perfect home only to find out it’s not within your BAH? With RentSmart that won’t happen! AHRN has automated BAH searches to find homes that are within your price range. This includes accounting for your new duty station’s estimated utility cost.
This means no more pouring through unorganized rental listings, hoping to find one in your range. Easily browse and sort your listings by price and search with ease, knowing that you won’t be going over your housing allowance. On all rental search results pages, you will see a BAH Calculator to the far right by “Favorites.” If you click on that, this feature will tell you how far above or below your BAH the rent is for that listing.
A common question is, “What’s the average rent in the area”? To make sure you never pay too much, now you can get unbiased, real-time data from AHRN with our RentSmart tool. From your Homepage, click the “RentSmart Average Tool.”
The RentSmart tool calculates the average for the entire area for all types of housing, including apartments, single-family homes and condos. You can select which bedroom count you are interested in and also compare your findings against your current area listed in your Housing Profile.
Create Your Housing Profile for Personalized Searches
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to every single home search. Perhaps you have a dual-income family, and you want to explore outside of your BAH range. Create your Housing profile and input your ideal housing search criteria. This can include bed count, bath count, price, size, location and even type of property!
Once completed, the listings that match your profile will display on your Homepage for easy location and viewing. Also, as you browse through other listings, each listing will be compared to your Housing Profile as well as your BAH to ensure that you are in the desired range for your new home.
Save Your Favorite Homes
A search for the perfect place to live can be overwhelming. Instead of moving into the first acceptable place you find, utilize AHRN’s “Favorites” feature to save the homes you are interested in and take your time making an informed decision. This allows you to easily find your favorite listings later on.
This is especially valuable for married service members who may not live close to their spouse and still want to compare favorites with their loved one. The feature makes it easier to find the perfect place for the whole family! The favorites are accessible via your “Homepage” or under “Search Main Menu.”
Saving searches is easy. On your search results page through AHRN and to the right of each listing, you’ll see a Favorites check mark. This is where you “click” and save!
Map and Route Your Home Tour With Point-By-Point Directions
Once you have taken full advantage of our many BAH, RentSmart and custom searches that are, you can then map out your home tour with AHRN’s Map and Route functionality. All of these features were designed to help you search and keep track of the military housing options that fit within your preferences and needs.
Determine how far listings are away from your work, or route a whole day of home tours by saving all your preferred homes to favorites. Once saved, you can add them to the map by clicking the Green + Map Icon next to each listing on the Favorites or any search results pages.
Your route is just a few clicks away! Follow these steps on how to map your route:
- Click the Map Route and Get Directions at the top of your search results page
- Click the + Map Icon next to your desired listing
- Your listings should be on the Map and Route area. From there, click Optimize Route
- Click Map with Google Maps
- Once you are on Google Maps, click “Details” in the left-hand section, and then click on the Share icon
You should now be able to shorten the link and send yourself the full routing on your phone to give you point-by-point directions!
Take AHRN On The Go
That’s right! Our site is compatible with your cellphone, too. Simply open your browser on your mobile phone and log into AHRN’s mobile site. From there, you can do most searches and there’s even a special “Find Listings Near Me” if you’re out and about and want to find available listings close to you. You can utilize this feature in any area you want, and you can also respond to messages straight from your phone!
Utilize Our Complete PCS Toolkit
Looking for a tool to help you organize your life – or at least your next PCS? Then you have come to the right place! The PCS Toolkit offers printables to help you organize your move. The toolkit provides in-depth guidance for every stage of your move.
From a PCS checklist to keep you on task to entitlement estimates to tips on choosing the right home, we’ve created the perfect resources for military members. Download the PCS Toolkit and be ready the next time you find yourself off to a new duty station.
Check Out the Business Directory
An often overlooked part of moving is finding a whole new roster of credible services and businesses for all the little aspects of our day-to-day lives. And, when you don’t know anyone in your new area, it’s hard to discover the best places to go without some trial and error.
Where do you go to get your hair done? What about a new vet for the pets? And perhaps most importantly, which pizza place has the best pizza? Find out which services are now available in your new area thanks to AHRN’s business directory!
Learn More With Our Military Move Resources
Military service is more than a job; it is a lifestyle and a community. On our AHRN blog, you can learn about your next duty station, how to master your walk-through, or even how to make your new place a home with helpful decorating tips.
As you search through our extensive resources, you’ll find fresh content routinely uploaded on the site, providing you with the information you need to make your PCS the best one yet. Here at AHRN, it is our mission to make your life a bit (or a lot) easier!