Are you taking advantage of all that AHRN.com has to offer? Don’t miss out on powerful home searching and move tools that will save you money and make your next move / PCS a breeze!
Have you signed up for AHRN.com? It’s easy and FREE! Signing up allows you to utilize your user profile – powering customized search results for your next local move or PCS. Filling out all the move / PCS details in your user profile helps AHRN.com to show you only the properties that meet your needs to save you time and help you find the place of your dreams (for this duty station anyway). If you like to see everything, don’t worry you can browse all listings too!
But 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
- Plan your move with AHRN.com’s PCS emails
- Determine your new BAH
- Maximize your rent money with RentSmart and the BAH search
- Find your dream home right on your home page
- Pin an existing search to your home page to save time
- Save your favorites to revisit
- Map your favorites for an in-person home tour or to compare locations
- Search for a neighborhood you’re visiting
- Organize your PCS with our printable PCS Toolkit
- Plug into the community with helpful tips & all the local connections you need
Home Searching As A Couple
AHRN.com knows that there are multiple perspectives at play when you are searching for a new place to live. So, we created the ability for couples to share a log in and save their personal favorites separately before narrowing the choices down. This is called “Adding an Additional User” under the the primary user’s account. The primary user invites their spouse/partner to join them in using AHRN.com under My Account. Each person will login with their separate accounts, but have joint access to favorites, saved searches and messages.
Plan A Smooth Move With AHRN.com PCS Emails
Whether you are PCSing or simply moving locally, when your register and input your “Move Date” and your “Installation” in your AHRN.com account, you’ll automatically receive PCS emails that are tailored with every stage of your move in mind. Get local information, checklists, useful PCS tools, and reminders about important, time-sensitive moving tasks. Don’t spend hours searching for the information you need, get it all sent straight to your inbox! (Note: Your Move Date must be at least 90 days out to get all of the PCS Emails. The emails are sent 90, 60, and 30 days prior to your designated Move Date.)
How to Determine Your BAH
To receive an accurate BAH rate for your new location (or grade), ensure that your AHRN.com account is properly filled out with Installation, Grade and Dependent Status. Only then will you receive accurate data on your dashboard and in your BAH searches.
Get The Most Home For Your Money With 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 – including accounting for your new duty station’s estimated utility cost. No more pouring through rental listings hoping to find one in your range. Easily browse and sort your listings by price to know 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 the Favorites. If you click on that, it’ll tell you how far above or below your BAH the rent is for that listing. 
Everyone wants to know “what’s the average rent in the area” right? To make sure you never pay too much, now you can get unbiased, real time data from AHRN.com with our RentSmart tool. From your Home Page, under Tools and Relocation, click on “RentSmart Average Tool.” The RentSmart tool calculates the average for the entire area for Apartments, Townhomes and Houses. You can select which bedroom count you are interested in and also compare against the area listed in your Housing Profile (as long as it’s properly completed).
Create Your Housing Profile and Find Your Ideal Housing on Your Home Page!
Perhaps you have a dual income family and you want to explore outside of your BAH range. No problem! Create your Housing profile and input your ideal housing search criteria (bed/bath count, price, size, location, type, etc). Once completed, the listings that match your profile will display on your Home Page for easy 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 Search and Pin It to Your Home Page!
Perhaps you are not sure if you want to buy or rent. You can use your Home Page to keep track of BOTH of your ideal housing profiles. 1) Add your Housing Profile (e.g. homes for sale) and then 2) create a custom (New Search, e.g. homes for rent) to pin on your Home Page. The good news is that you can save as many saved searches you want but you can only pin one of them to your Home Page. From this example, you can see how you can track two types of ideal housing on your Home Page for easy access and comparison.
Save Your Favorites
A search for the perfect place to live can be overwhelming. Instead of moving on the first acceptable place you find, utilize AHRN.com‘s “Favorites” option to save the homes you are interested in and find the listings easily later. This is especially valuable for married (separated) service members who will want to compare favorites with their spouse and find the best fit for the whole family! The favorites are accessible via your Home Page or under the Search Main Menu.
- How to save searches? On your search results pages on AHRN.com, to the far right of each listing, there is a Favorites check mark.
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 tailored to help you search and keep track of the perfect housing, you can then map out your home tour with AHRN.com’s Map and Route functionality. 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 then adding them to the map by clicking the Green + Map Icon next to each listing on the Favorites page (or any search results page).
- How to Map and Route? Alternatively, click the Map Route and Get Directions at the top of your search results page, then click the + Map Icon next to your desired listing. When you have your desired listings (let’s say a day of house touring) on the Map and Route area, click Optimize Route, then click Map with Google Maps. Once you are on Google Maps, click “Details” in the left hand section, click on the Share Icon
and you’ll be able to shorten the link and send yourself the full routing on your phone to give you point-by-point directions. (TIP: You can enter a custom address in the Map and Route on AHRN.com (for example, your hotel, for home touring while visiting!))
Are you moving locally or if you are home shopping, find homes near you with our Mobile Website
Just open your browser on your mobile phone and log into AHRN.com’s mobile site. From there you can do most searches and there’s special “Find Listings Near Me” if you’re out and about and want to find available listings close to you in an area you like! Also, check your messages and much, much more.
The PCS Toolkit: Thrive Before, During, and After Your PCS
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 has printables for every stage of your move, from a PCS checklist to keep you on task to entitlement estimates, PCS budgeting, and tips to choose the right home, to a document checklist, and other useful resources. Download this valuable resource here, and be ready the next time you find yourself off to a new duty station.
Get More Than Directions On The AHRN.com Blog
Military service is more than a job – it is a lifestyle, a community. On the AHRN.com 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. You’ll find new content on the blog daily, providing you with the information you need to make your next duty station the best one yet.
AHRN.com is full of useful resources just waiting to make your life a little bit (or a lot) easier.
Business Directory
An often overlooked part of moving is finding a whole new slew of services and businesses for all the little parts of day to day living. When you don’t know anyone it’s hard to discover where to go without 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.com’s business directory!
Learn more about AHRN.com
Post a Listing
Start your home search
Real Estate Home Buying Resource Center
Real Estate Agent Resources
Are you a local business? Add your listing to the directory today to help new military customers find you!
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Have you used any of these resources? What was your experience like?
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