Duty Station Decider

Data Sources & Methodology

Every factor is a percentile within the 299 U.S. military housing markets, the same comparison frame as our livability grades and the 2026 Military Home Buying Report. Factor grades use the same A-F quintile scale as those livability grades (A = top fifth of markets, F = bottom fifth); hover any grade in the results for the precise percentile. Explore mode and the better-fit suggestions run the identical scoring over every stateside installation we track for your branch, excluding admin headquarters, closed posts, and overseas bases, and showing one installation per metro so a single market cannot flood a shortlist; suggestions appear only when nothing on your own list scores at least 60/100 on your priorities, and only for markets that beat your best base. Schools: Stanford SEDA 6.0 achievement of the districts serving each market's commuter ZIPs (county-level estimate where district coverage is thin, labeled). At the 13 stateside installations with DoD-run schools on post (Bragg, Campbell, Benning, Lejeune, and others, per the DoDEA Americas directory), the Schools row discloses that on-post children attend those schools, which the district grade does not cover. Safety: FBI Crime Data Explorer 2024, full-year-reporting agencies. Amenities and family activities: Census County Business Patterns 2023. BAH value: official 2026 DoD rates (with-dependents table) minus local 3-bedroom rent (HUD fair market rent for most markets; Zillow or documented local figures where metro FMR misstates the local market). Walkability: EPA National Walkability Index (2021). Childcare: DoL National Database of Childcare Prices (county weekly medians annualized x 52; modeled, through 2022). Spouse job market: BLS county unemployment (modeled estimate, a whole-market proxy, not a military-spouse figure). Transit: Census ACS 2019-2023. Airports: FAA CY2024 hub classes, straight-line distance. Climate: NOAA 1991-2020 normals, nearest station. Barracks quality (Army single members only): the Army's first FY25 Unaccompanied Housing Tenant Satisfaction Survey (a 1-100 CEL satisfaction index), rankable only where an installation logged at least 30 responses; posts with fewer show their score as labeled context, and this factor compares Army posts to each other, not to the 299 markets. On-post family housing (Army families only): the Army's FY25 Privatized Family Housing Tenant Satisfaction Survey (same 1-100 CEL index; 48 installations, 28.2% response), rankable at posts with at least 30 responses, always shown with the private company that operates that post's housing. When either survey factor is among your ranked priorities, explore-mode shortlists and better-fit suggestions draw only from posts with rankable survey data, so a missing survey can never make a post look like a better bet than a surveyed one. No other branch publishes per-installation barracks data yet. Barracks reporting beyond the survey: curated facts from GAO reports, the DoD Barracks Task Force, and named projects, each cited inline and never scored or ranked. On-base amenities (single members; Army, Navy, and Marine Corps): facility counts from each installation's official MWR directory (armymwr.com garrisons, Navy MWR installation sites, MCCS installation sites), retrieved September 2026, with DeCA commissary and BOSS/Liberty/Single Marine Program presence flagged; ranked within installations that publish a directory. Counts are what the directory lists; absence from a directory does not prove absence on post, larger installations naturally list more, and combined directories (Stewart-Hunter, Lejeune-New River) are labeled. The Air Force and Space Force publish no central facility directories, so their installations carry no amenity score rather than a fabricated one. Overseas & territory stations (the few we cover with a base guide) are shown as an evidence panel, never a ranked score: the factors above are U.S. datasets that do not exist abroad, so an overseas card shows only sourced intel that travels, standard tour length (JTR OCONUS supplement), command sponsorship (Korea), spouse employment under the SOFA, the OHA housing ceiling and overseas COLA index for your pay grade (from our Overseas Station Planner datasets, DTMO-sourced and representative, with a link to run your full pay there), the on-base amenities the MWR directory lists, DoDEA schools (overseas, DoDEA is the school system), barracks where surveyed, and distance from your hometown. Ranked scoring is stateside; assignments always follow the needs of the service.

Last reviewed: September 4, 2026