Moody AFB BAH Rates 2026

How BAH Is Calculated Here

The rate is built from a survey of Valdosta-area rents, split into six housing profiles with average utility costs added, one profile assigned per paygrade.

It is a median, not a ceiling — half the qualifying homes in Lowndes County cost more. And it cannot fall while you are assigned here, only rise.

Valdosta is worth understanding as a specific case rather than a generic cheap market, because the reason BAH goes so far here is not that the Air Force is generous. It is that Lowndes County has a large, genuinely inexpensive housing stock and a rental market softened by Valdosta State University's enrollment cycle. The survey reads that softness and still has to pay enough to house an E-6 family, which is how you end up with a rate that covers a whole median house.

Two things to file away before the numbers below.

Georgia's standard homestead exemption is not automatic. You must apply with the Lowndes County Tax Commissioner, and the deadline is 1 April of the year you want it to apply. Miss it and you pay the unexempted bill for a full year.

The property tax rate in the table below assumes a homesteaded owner-occupier. If you are looking at a former rental — and in a college town you will be — the tax figure on the listing is the investor's number, not yours.

What BAH Actually Covers at Moody AFB

Valdosta is the most affordable market of any base in this guide, and it changes what BAH can do.

The median Valdosta home sold for $185,000 (Redfin), at $111 a square foot. At 0% down, 6.77% on a thirty-year VA loan with the 2.15% funding fee financed:

	Monthly
Principal & interest	$1,228
Property tax (Lowndes County, 0.96%)	$148
Homeowners insurance	$192
Total	$1,568

Against BAH with dependents:

Rank	BAH	Covers the payment?
E-4	$1,503	Short $65
E-5	$1,524	Short $44
E-6	$1,917	Covers, $349 left
E-7	$1,950	Covers, $382 left
O-3	$2,004	Covers, $436 left

Read the E-5 row again. An E-5 with dependents is forty-four dollars a month short of owning the median home in this market outright on BAH. The price where it balances exactly is $179,056 — about 3% under the median. That is not a stretch; that is a normal listing.

From E-6 up you are not just covered, you are several hundred dollars a month ahead, and that surplus is yours to keep. It is the strongest BAH-to-price ratio at any installation covered here.

Georgia insurance helps: $2,304 a year on $300,000 of dwelling coverage is below the national average, and Valdosta is far enough inland to avoid the coastal loading that punishes the Carolina markets in this guide.

How It Compares

A three-bedroom rents for about $1,419 in Valdosta (Apartments.com), against $1,568 to own the median home. You are paying roughly $149 a month more to own — and the ownership figure includes principal, which is money moving into your own balance sheet rather than a landlord's.

On the model used across this site — 2.5% appreciation, 3% rent inflation, 1% of purchase price a year in maintenance, 3% closing costs in and 7% selling costs out — buying passes renting at about month 63, a little over five years.

That maintenance line matters here more than the headline $149 suggests: on a $185,000 house it adds about $154 a month, which roughly doubles the real cost difference against renting. A standard Moody tour runs three to four years, so a single tour does not clear the break-even — a second consecutive assignment does.

Two further cautions before you act.

The market has been soft. Valdosta's median was down 3.6% year over year at last reading, and price per square foot was off more than 9%. The model assumes 2.5% annual appreciation, which Valdosta has not recently delivered. If prices stay flat, the break-even stretches past six years.

The data is thinner than it looks. Valdosta sells roughly 45 homes a month. Medians computed on that volume swing hard, and the most recent Redfin figure lags the current month by longer than it would in a large market. Treat $185,000 as the right order of magnitude, not a precise number, and price against actual listings.

What to do with this: this is the strongest buy case on the site, and it still needs more than one tour to pay off. If you are here for a single assignment, rent and keep the E-6 surplus. If you expect to stay, or you are willing to hold the house as a rental afterwards, buying at or a little under the median is a sound decision at E-5 and above. Run your rank and a real listing through the BAH calculator before you commit.