Fort Bragg BAH Rates 2026

How BAH Is Calculated Here

BAH is rebuilt every year from a survey of what people actually pay to rent in Fayetteville, Spring Lake and the surrounding county — median rent for six housing profiles, plus average electricity, heat and water costs. The Department of Defense assigns each paygrade one of those profiles and pays the median for it.

Two things follow that people miss.

The rate is a median, not a ceiling. Half the qualifying homes in Cumberland County cost more than your rate. Nothing in the system promises that any particular house is covered.

Your rate cannot fall while you are assigned here. If next year's survey comes back lower, new arrivals get the lower number and you keep yours until you PCS or promote into a different bracket. It moves up mid-tour, never down.

There is a third thing specific to Fayetteville, and it is the one that will actually cost you money if you miss it. The tax figure on an old listing is worthless here. Cumberland County completed a revaluation effective 1 July 2025, its first since 2017, and residential assessed values rose an average of 86.2% countywide. The county cut its rate thirty cents in response and the city cut to its lowest rate in three decades, but both landed above revenue-neutral, so bills went up in real terms anyway. Any comparable sale from before July 2025 carries a tax number that no longer exists.

What BAH Actually Covers at Fort Bragg

The median Fayetteville home sold for $239,869 in June 2026 (Redfin), at $147 a square foot, essentially flat year over year. Financed with a VA loan at 0% down and the 6.77% thirty-year rate, funding fee rolled in:

	Monthly
Principal & interest	$1,592
Property tax (county 0.499% + city 0.4495%)	$190
Homeowners insurance	$317
Total	$2,099

Against BAH with dependents:

Rank	BAH	Covers the payment?
E-4	$1,722	Short $377
E-5	$1,806	Short $293
E-6	$2,049	Short $50
E-7	$2,094	Short $5
O-3	$2,175	Covers, $76 left

Read the insurance line before the tax line. At $317 a month it is more than the property tax and principal-adjacent in size. That $3,799 annual figure is the North Carolina statewide average on $300,000 of dwelling coverage, and statewide North Carolina is dragged upward by the coast. Fayetteville sits ninety miles inland, so your real quote should come in under it — possibly well under. This is the one number on the page most likely to move in your favor, and the only way to find out is to get a bindable quote on a specific address before you write an offer.

If you carry a VA service-connected disability rating, the funding fee is waived, which takes roughly $33 a month off every figure above.

How It Compares

A three-bedroom rents for about $1,600 a month in Fayetteville (Zillow, September 2026). Owning the median home runs $2,099. That $499 gap is the whole argument, and it is wider than it looks: add the 1% of purchase price a year that maintenance actually costs and the true monthly difference is closer to $700.

On the model above, buying passes renting at about month 102 — eight and a half years. A standard Fort Bragg tour is three. Even back-to-back assignments rarely reach eight and a half years in one house.

That number is long because Fayetteville's rental market is cheap relative to its purchase market, which is the opposite of the coastal posts. The house is not expensive; renting is simply a better deal here than the sale price suggests.

The market gives you no urgency either way. Homes moved in 30 days in June, identical to a year earlier, on healthy volume. Nothing about this market punishes waiting.

What to do with this: for a single three-year tour, renting in Fayetteville is the defensible default, and the burden of proof is on buying. Buying makes sense in two cases — you intend to keep the house as a rental when you leave, or you have reason to believe you will be here well past one tour. If you are buying anyway, the price where BAH covers the whole payment is $200,475 for an E-5 and $233,183 for an E-6, 16% and 3% below the median. Those houses exist in Fayetteville. Run your rank and a real listing price through the BAH calculator first.