Joint Base San Antonio
PCSing To San Antonio
I was a Marine. I have made this move, and I have walked a lot of families through it since — including plenty who bought a house here before they ever set foot in it.
The Question Everybody Asks First
See what your BAH buys you in San Antonio
Put your housing allowance in and it tells you the price that payment supports here — VA loan, nothing down, taxes and insurance included. Not a pre-approval, but a far better starting point than guessing, and it takes about ten seconds.
That BAH buys about
$0
Based on a 30-year fixed VA loan with nothing down. An estimate to plan with, not a pre-approval.
Where the payment goes
Loan amount
$0
Down payment
$0
Est. cash to close
$0
Texas property taxes and San Antonio insurance are both higher than a lot of the places you may be coming from, which is why they are in the math here rather than left as a footnote. Adjust the rate and insurance fields once you have real quotes.
DTMO · Official
Don’t know your BAH yet?
Enter a San Antonio ZIP, the year and your pay grade in the Defense Travel Management Office’s own lookup. I won’t print rate tables here — they change every year, and a stale number you budget against is worse than no number at all.
Open the official lookupVA · Official
Request your COE
Your Certificate of Eligibility shows what entitlement you have and what any prior VA loan already used. Start it early — it takes longer than people expect and it shapes everything downstream.
Request a COEVA · Official
Entitlement & loan limits
Full entitlement means no VA county loan limit. Remaining entitlement is figured against the county limit minus what you have used — which is where most people PCSing in actually sit.
Read the rulesWhy Me
I have used this loan myself
Not A Marketing Angle
I served in the Marine Corps. I have bought a home with a VA loan, and I know the parts of it that trip people up because they tripped me up first — the funding fee, the appraisal timeline, what occupancy actually means when your orders say one thing and the calendar says another.
That is different from an agent who put a flag on their business card. When you ask me a VA question, you are not going to get a shrug and a lender’s phone number.
What I’ll Promise You
- I will take care of you and your family like it matters, because it does. A PCS is hard enough without the house being the thing that goes wrong.
- I will tell you the truth even when it is not what you want to hear — including when the answer is rent this tour and buy the next one.
- I will be a resource you can lean on during the process and after it. The plumber, the contractor, the question about whether to sell when you get your next set of orders. Call me.
On lenders: I’ll point you to VA lenders I have actually closed with, and I have no financial interest in which one you pick. The gap between a lender who knows this loan and one who is learning it on your file can run into real money on the origination side alone, and it is worth comparing more than the rate. Ask me what to compare.
A PCS is not a normal home purchase
You are choosing a house, a commute, a school district and sometimes a whole city on somebody else’s timeline, often from a thousand miles away, and usually while you are also trying to finish out at your current station. The order things happen in matters more than it does for anyone else, and a lot of what you read online is written for civilians.
01
Which Gate You Report To
Lackland, Randolph and Fort Sam sit on three different sides of a very wide city. Picking the neighborhood before you know the gate is how people end up with an hour in the truck twice a day. More on each below.
02
Timing Around Orders
Orders unlock almost everything — your move, your house-hunting days, often your financing. We plan backward from your report date so nothing lands on top of anything else.
03
Buying From Far Away
Video walkthroughs, honest narration, and a closing you can do remotely. A good number of my clients never saw their house in person until the day they got the keys, and that is a normal thing now.
Three Gates, Three Different Answers
Where people live, by base
JBSA is really three installations spread across the metro, and the commute is the thing nobody weighs heavily enough until they are living it. Before you commit to an address, run the drive to your gate in Google Maps with the departure time set to your report hour — typical traffic, not an empty road.
JBSA
Lackland
Far west and southwest. Alamo Ranch is the obvious answer — newer construction, Northside ISD, and about twenty to thirty minutes to the gate, which is as good as it gets off base. Helotes and Westover Hills work too, and Castroville is worth a look if you want land and do not mind US 90.
JBSA
Randolph
Northeast, out past Universal City. Selma, Schertz and Garden Ridge are the close-in answers and the ones I point people to first — newer housing stock, established neighborhoods, and a short drive to the gate. Cibolo sits right there too, and New Braunfels is a reasonable run up I 35 if you want the rivers.
JBSA
Fort Sam Houston
North central, close in to the city. Shavano Park and Stone Oak both reach it comfortably, and Shavano Park is about as central as you can get to all three installations at once — which matters if you might move between them.
In Google Maps, choose Directions, then Depart at, and set the day and time you would actually be driving it. The estimate changes more than people expect.
The Part Most People Do Not Know
You may be able to keep the house you already own
This is the single most useful thing I tell people PCSing in, and most of them have never heard it: a VA loan is not a one-time benefit, and you do not automatically have to sell the house at your last duty station in order to buy here.
How It Works
- Your entitlement is an amount, not a single use. If a prior VA loan is still charged against part of it, what is left is your remaining entitlement.
- With full entitlement, VA does not cap your loan amount at a county limit — your lender and the appraisal still govern what you can actually borrow.
- With remaining entitlement, the guaranty is figured against the county loan limit minus what you have used. In practice that often means a down payment on the second home rather than zero down, and it is frequently a much smaller one than people assume.
- That is how a service member keeps the house at the last station as a rental and still buys here. It is common. It is worth a conversation with a VA-experienced lender before you list anything.
What Still Applies
- Occupancy. A VA loan is for a home you intend to occupy. On active duty and PCSing, a spouse moving in can generally satisfy that — your lender will confirm the specifics for your situation.
- The funding fee. First use and subsequent use are charged at different rates, and many veterans with a service-connected disability rating are exempt entirely. Check your COE.
- Entitlement can be restored. Selling the prior home and paying off that VA loan generally frees the entitlement back up. Timing matters if you are doing both in the same season.
- Your lender decides, not me. I am not a lender and I do not run your entitlement. What I do is make sure you ask these questions before you make a decision you cannot walk back.
Buying From Another State
How sight-unseen actually works
There is no official DoD program for this and no checklist anybody issued. What there is, is a way of working that a lot of us got very good at in 2020 and never stopped using, because it turns out it serves people buying from three time zones away just as well as it served people who could not leave the house.
01
A Live Walk, Not A Video
We do it on FaceTime or video call, in real time, and you drive. Open that closet. Go back to the garage. Point the camera at the ceiling in the back bedroom. A produced tour shows you what the seller wants you to see; a live one shows you what you asked about.
02
The Unedited Version
Afterward you get the walk-through I record on my own — no music, no cuts, narrated with what the listing photos are hiding. The slope of the driveway. The neighbor’s boat. What the road sounds like with the windows open.
03
The Commute, Before You Commit
We pull the route in Google Maps with the departure time set to when you would actually be leaving for your report time, so you are looking at typical traffic instead of an empty-road estimate. Six miles to the gate and thirty-five minutes to drive it are both true at once here, and the map will tell you that before the listing does.
What Protects You
- The option period. In Texas this is your paid right to walk away for any reason. For a remote buyer it is the single most important term in the contract, and I negotiate it accordingly.
- A real inspection, read together. We go through the report on a call, page by page, and I tell you which items are normal for a house that age here and which ones would make me nervous.
- The VA appraisal. VA-assigned appraisers check property condition against minimum requirements, which is a genuine second set of eyes you do not get with every loan type.
- Specialists when it matters. Foundation, roof, HVAC, sewer scope. If something in the report is unclear, we get somebody out rather than guessing from a thousand miles away.
Signing From Away
- Remote notarization. Texas permits online notarization, and most closings can be handled without you in the room. Your title company and lender set what they will accept.
- Power of attorney. Common on military closings and sometimes necessary if you are deployed or in transit. VA and your lender have specific requirements for POA on a VA loan — we sort that out early, not the week of closing.
- Mail-away packages. Still routine. The main enemy is time zones and mail, so we build the calendar backward from your report date.
- Do not close the day you move. Closing and a household goods pickup on the same date is how people end up in a hotel with a truck outside. We leave room.
Sequence
The order this goes in
Most of the trouble I see comes from doing the right things in the wrong order. Roughly, it looks like this.
01
Research early
Before orders. Learn the city, narrow to two or three areas, and start a conversation. Nothing here commits you to anything.
02
Orders in hand
Orders, or a letter in lieu, are what unlock your move. The standing advice from Military OneSource is not to lock yourself into a purchase before you have them, and it is good advice.
03
COE and lender
Request the Certificate of Eligibility and get fully underwritten, not just pre-qualified. In a market where you may be competing remotely, that difference is worth real money.
04
House-hunting days
Permissive TDY for house hunting is command-approved and the rules are not the same across branches — the Army commonly allows around ten days, the Navy works in workdays. Check with your command rather than the internet, and do not confuse it with TLE.
05
Under contract
Option period, inspection, negotiation. This is where most of the money gets made or lost, and it is the part I handle hardest.
06
Appraisal and close
The VA appraisal runs on its own clock, so we time the closing to your report date with margin on both sides. Not the same day as your pack-out.
07
Sign in
BAH at the new station generally starts when you report, not when you arrive in town and not when DEERS updates. If you are in temporary lodging before that, TLE is the piece that covers it.
The Short Version
You have enough to carry during a PCS. The house should not be one of the hard parts.
Start Here
Got Orders To JBSA?
Call or text, even if your orders are months out and nothing is settled yet. The earliest conversations are the most useful ones, and they cost nothing.
About San Antonio How I Represent Buyers
Josue Gallardo is a licensed Texas real estate agent and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. He is not a lender, and he is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Joint Base San Antonio, or any branch of the armed forces. Everything on this page is general information that changes over time — BAH rates, VA entitlement rules, funding fees, and leave policy all do. Confirm your own situation with the official sources linked above, your command, and a VA-experienced lender before making decisions.