PCSing to Holloman? Start Here.

Holloman's Main Gate is off US-70, about 10 minutes west of Alamogordo, and it's open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The West Gate runs limited weekday hours, inbound 6:00 to 8:00 a.m. and outbound 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding federal holidays and Wing down days. If you are choosing where to live based on your commute, the Main Gate is the one to measure to, because it's the one that's always open.

There is no right answer to this, and anyone who gives you one is guessing about your life.

On base is Soaring Heights Communities, managed by WinnCompanies. Mostly three and four bedroom homes with fenced yards, air conditioning, washer and dryer hookups, and a garage or carport, organized by rank category. There are 22 playgrounds, two splash parks, courts and walking trails. Your BAH goes to housing and you're done thinking about it. No commute, no yard service to arrange, no landlord, and maintenance calls get answered.

Wait times vary and change constantly, so I won't quote you a number. Call Soaring Heights at 888-897-8428 or the Military Housing Office at 575-572-2285 and ask what it looks like for your rank and bedroom count in your arrival month.

Unaccompanied housing is separate. Holloman has a dedicated dormitory campus with 637 rooms for enlisted E-1 through E-4 with less than three years of service. Private rooms with shared bathrooms. That office is 575-572-3295.

Off base means you choose your neighborhood, your school zone, your yard and your commute. If you rent, you keep the flexibility. If you buy, and the numbers work, your BAH goes toward something you own instead of something you return.

The Housing Referral Office at 575-572-7832 keeps listings of off base rentals, and HOMES.mil is worth a look before you arrive.

On base probably makes more sense if you want your housing cost to be one predictable number, you would rather not think about maintenance, you want the shortest commute you can get, or you want the base community around you rather than at the end of a drive.

Buying off base probably makes more sense if you expect to be here several years, you want to choose your neighborhood and your school zone, you want control over the place you live, and you are ready for what owning a house actually costs beyond the mortgage payment.

Your Military Housing Area is NM205, "Holloman AFB / Alamogordo, NM." That's the code that determines your rate.

Look up your current rate at the Department of Defense BAH calculator: https://www.travel.dod.mil/Allowances/Basic-Allowance-for-Housing/BAH-Rate-Lookup/

I'm sending you there instead of printing a number because rates are set annually, effective January 1, and a figure on a website is wrong the moment it changes. Use the official source.

How it's set. BAH is based on local civilian housing costs in your assigned duty station's housing area. It varies by pay grade and by whether you have dependents. The number of dependents doesn't change it, only whether you have any. For NM205, the rate is built as roughly 83% rent and 17% utilities, which is useful to know when you're budgeting, because your allowance is meant to cover both.

One thing families miss: BAH follows your duty station, not where you choose to live. If you're assigned to Holloman and decide to live in Las Cruces, you still draw the NM205 rate, not the Las Cruces one.

Renting versus buying. The honest framing is not "buying is better." It's a math problem with three inputs: how long you'll be here, what your BAH covers, and what happens on the other end.

Renting is the low friction choice. You hand back the keys. Nothing about a PCS out is complicated.

Buying can put your housing allowance toward equity instead of a landlord, and in a market where the typical home runs around $222,000 as of July 2026, the monthly numbers often work. But buying has costs on both ends, and a short assignment can eat any gain. See the section below on what happens if you PCS out in two or three years, because that's the real question.

On VA loans. If you're eligible, the VA loan is the strongest tool you have:

• No down payment required, as long as the price doesn't exceed the appraised value. Nearly 90% of VA-backed loans are made with nothing down.
• No private mortgage insurance, which a conventional loan usually requires if you put down less than 20%.
• No prepayment penalty, and often fewer closing costs, some of which the seller may be able to pay.
• You have to live in it. VA loans are for homes you occupy, not investment properties.
• You'll need a Certificate of Eligibility, and you still have to qualify on credit and income. VA backing is not a substitute for that.
• There's a one-time funding fee, calculated as a percentage of the loan, which varies by loan type, amount, whether it's your first use, and your down payment. It can be paid at closing or rolled into the loan.

You may be exempt from the funding fee entirely if you receive VA compensation for a service-connected disability, are eligible for it but take retirement or active duty pay instead, receive Dependency and Indemnity Compensation as a surviving spouse, are active duty with a pre-discharge disability claim rating, or received a Purple Heart on or before closing. That exemption is worth real money and plenty of people don't know they qualify.

Current details and rates are at https://www.va.gov/housing-assistance/home-loans/. Talk to a VA approved lender before you shop, not after.

Two of these are genuinely significant, and one of them is on a clock.

Disabled veteran property tax exemption, and it changed in your favor. As of tax year 2026, New Mexico's disabled veteran property tax exemption is proportional to your VA disability rating. It used to be all or nothing at a 100% rating. Now a 60% rating means a 60% exemption on your principal residence, and a 100% rating means no property tax at all. It extends to unremarried surviving spouses, and it's limited to a parcel of five acres or less. New Mexico voters approved this in November 2024 and it was implemented by House Bill 47, signed in March 2025.

The standard veteran exemption went up too, from $4,000 to $10,000 of taxable value starting in tax year 2025, and it's now indexed to inflation each year after.

To claim either one, you'll need your DD-214, proof of New Mexico residency, and for the disabled exemption your VA award letter. The New Mexico Department of Veterans Services issues the certificate, and you present it to the Otero County Assessor. Ask the Assessor for the current inflation-adjusted figure, since it changes annually.

Military retirement pay exemption, and this one has a deadline. New Mexico currently exempts up to $30,000 of military retirement pay and Survivor Benefit Plan payments from state income tax. That provision is scheduled to expire after tax year 2026. Two bills in the 2026 legislature would have made it permanent and neither passed. The 2027 legislature may revisit it, but as the law stands today it sunsets.

If you are choosing New Mexico partly because of that exemption, you need to know it is not guaranteed past this year. Disability retirement pay is exempt separately and is not affected.

I am a Realtor and not a tax professional, so please confirm all of this with someone who is before you make a decision on it. But I would rather you hear it from me now than find out in April.

The Air Force changed the rules in your favor in February 2026, and a lot of relocation pages haven't caught up.

Airmen and Guardians can now use up to 10 days of permissive TDY between duty stations, taken incrementally rather than all at once, and it can be used for packing and unpacking household goods. Under the old rules the days had to be consecutive, you had to choose either before the move or on arrival but not both, and your PTDY ended the moment you secured housing. Those restrictions are gone. The governing instruction is DAFI 36-3003, updated March 2026. Confirm the specifics with your MPF, because your situation may vary.

Practically, that means you can split your house hunting: a few days out here to look before the move, and a few days after you arrive to finish. That is a much better way to buy a house than deciding in a panic over one weekend.

Temporary lodging while you look. Holloman Inn has 30 temporary lodging facility suites for families, and 12 pet friendly rooms set aside on a first come basis. Reservations at 575-572-3311, desk open 24 hours. PCS reservations are accepted up to 30 days out and after that it's space available, so book the day you have orders. You may be eligible for Temporary Lodging Expense on top of that.

What to do before you get here: get your Certificate of Eligibility started, talk to a VA approved lender and get pre-approved, and decide on your school priorities, because in Alamogordo the attendance zone will narrow your search more than almost anything else.

What to wait on: don't commit to a neighborhood from a map. The east side and the west side of this town feel completely different, and the drive to the gate is not the same from both. That's a thing to feel in a car, not read on a website.

A short ownership window is the real question for military buyers, and it deserves an honest answer. Breaking even on a home in two to three years depends on how the market moves while you are here, what you bought for, and the costs of selling. Sometimes renting it out when you leave makes more sense than selling, and a good property manager can keep the place running from your next duty station.

Here is where I would slow you down.

If you might be gone in two or three years, do not assume buying comes out ahead. Whether it does depends on what you pay, what your loan looks like, what your closing costs run, which way the market moves while you are here, what breaks and what it costs to fix, and what it costs to sell on the other end. Even when the monthly payment beats what you would otherwise spend on housing, a short window does not leave much room for any of that to go sideways.

Keeping it as a rental when you leave is worth looking at. It is not an automatic safety net, though, and I would rather you hear that from me now than work it out later. Management fees, months with nobody in it, repairs between tenants, what your insurance does once it stops being owner occupied, and whether anyone wants to rent it at the price you need. Before you count on that plan, talk to a property manager here about what rent is realistic, what turnover actually costs, and what they would charge to handle it.

So match the house to how long you are likely to be here, and run the real numbers before you sign something rather than after. I can walk you through what buying and selling actually cost in this market. A tax or financial professional should look at the rest of it, because a short timeline makes those numbers matter more than they usually would.

Anyone who promises you that buying will save money, or that renting it out later will work out fine, is guessing.

First, a correction to something you'll read elsewhere. Several relocation sites, including one official DoD page, describe the schools on Holloman as DoDEA schools. They are not. There are no DoDEA schools at Holloman, and none anywhere in New Mexico. Holloman Elementary and Holloman Middle are Alamogordo Public Schools campuses that happen to sit on base.

That's actually good news, because it makes things simpler:

• No DoD eligibility screening. You enroll the same way every other family in the district does.
• Assignment is by attendance zone, based on where you live. Living in Holloman housing puts your kids in the Holloman Elementary and Holloman Middle zone.
• Holloman Elementary serves preschool through fifth grade. Holloman Middle serves sixth through eighth.
• There is no high school on base. High schoolers attend Alamogordo High School, and the district runs a bus to and from the base for them.
• New Mexico has statewide open enrollment, so if you live off base and want a specific school, or live on base and want a different one, you can apply for an out of zone transfer.

Both on-base schools are brand new or nearly so. A new Holloman Elementary opened in 2023 and the new Holloman Middle School had its ribbon cutting in August 2026, funded by roughly $60 million from the Defense Department.

One thing that's genuinely useful: the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children allows exceptions to New Mexico's age cutoffs for kindergarten and first grade. If your child started school on a different state's calendar, they don't have to lose a year to ours. Ask about it specifically, because it doesn't always get offered.

Alamogordo High School runs a Student 2 Student program built for exactly this, helping kids who transfer in mid-stream find their footing.

The people to call: the Holloman School Liaison Office at 575-572-3944 is the single best number for any school question. Alamogordo Public Schools is at 575-812-6000, and there's a Military Transition Counselor at 575-812-6517.

If you're willing to commute, Tularosa, Cloudcroft, Las Cruces and Ruidoso all have their own districts, and Alamogordo has several private options including a classical Christian school.