To rent or Sell? The 2026 PCS-ing homeowner’s biggest question

Brent Wachter bought his Albuquerque home in 2023 for $679,000. He wasn’t speculating or flipping properties. He was an Air Force service member who expected to stay where he was. His previous posting in Wichita had lasted over a decade, and nothing would ever change.

Then came the overseas assignment, and with it, the question that has become the defining financial anxiety of PCS season 2026: Do you sell, or do you rent it out?

Wachter listed at $689,000, just above what he paid and just enough to walk away clean. Buyers weren’t interested. Offers came in low; one buyer backed out entirely at the last minute. His May report date was closing in.

“It’s not like we’re trying to make money here,” he told CNN. “If we can walk away with zero, we’re fine.” He eventually accepted $620,000. After fees and closing costs, walking away with zero became walking away in the red.

His story is the story of the 2026 PCS season.

How We Got Here

Military families who bought between 2022 and 2023 did not make a reckless bet. They were human beings with PCS orders, a VA loan benefit, and a window to use it. Rates jumped.

But home values plateaued. Today’s national average 30-year VA mortgage rate sits at 6.35%, which sounds better than the 7% peak but does nothing for a family sitting on 2% equity with a closing date eight weeks out.

Civilian homeowners in this situation have one option military families do not: waiting. For rates to drop, for buyer confidence to recover, for the market to loosen up. No such luxury exists on a PCS clock.

Every decision about price, terms, and concessions has to fit inside a window that HomeLight’s data puts at roughly 90 days from list to close, in a market where existing home sales just hit a nine-month low.

Cost of Selling

Most military families do not know what the full net sheet looks like until they are sitting across from a closing attorney.

Agent commissions, seller closing costs, and the “get it ready” repairs and concessions typically land in the high single digits as a percentage of the sale price. On a $400,000 home, that is $28,000 to $40,000, leaving the table before a single dollar of mortgage payoff. On a home with thin equity, that math does not produce a check. It produces a bill.

One card in this hand does not get played often enough: the VA loan assumption. In a market where average buyers are staring at a 6.35% rate, a seller offering to let them assume a 2022-era loan in the 3% range is offering something genuinely rare.

A buyer’s monthly payment on a $350,000 balance drops by several hundred dollars, which can be leveraged in pricing and negotiation in ways a standard listing cannot.

CFPB’s mortgage assumption guidance lays out the process, and for the right buyer profile, it is one of the few legitimate advantages a 2022-2023 military homeowner holds right now.

These assumptions take time, require lender approvals, and the seller’s VA entitlement stays tied up until the assuming buyer refinances or sells. This is worth knowing prior to making it the centerpiece of your entire strategy.

Cost of Renting

Renting the home out sounds like the safe answer; however, it’s not always a cheap answer.

Most “accidental landlord” guides quote the property management fee as 8-12% of monthly rent, which is accurate and almost entirely misleading. According to a 2026 analysis by The Property CEO, ancillary fees, including the leasing fee, lease renewal fee, and maintenance markups, typically add 30 to 50% on top of that.

Leasing fees alone run 50 to 100% of one month’s rent, charged every time a new tenant is placed. On a $2,000 monthly rental, that is a $1,000 to $2,000 charge that hits before the first rent payment clears.

Then there is the PITI problem. Principal, interest, taxes, and insurance on a 2022-2023 purchase price do not magically align with what a tenant is willing to pay in 2026, even a military tenant using BAH.

A MyBaseGuide analysis of all 126 duty stations found that only 19% produce positive rental cash flow after a PCS move. At the average duty station, the monthly shortfall runs $544. Every month. Out of pocket. From whatever duty station the service member has just arrived at.

Managing that property from 800 miles away is a full-time second job. Landlord insurance requirements, SCRA compliance obligations for military tenants, vacancy periods between leases: none of those costs appear in the “rent covers the mortgage” calculation that makes renting sound viable at the kitchen table.

The Clock is Ticking

IRS Section 121 allows married homeowners to exclude up to $500,000 in capital gains from the sale of a primary residence, provided they have lived in the home for at least two of the previous five years. Under IRS Publication 523, that window stretches to ten years for qualifying service members.

Most civilian financial advice never mentions that it even exists. The clock is long, but it is still a clock.

What Section 121 does not protect against is depreciation recapture. Landlords are required to depreciate residential rental property over 27.5 years, and when the home eventually sells, that depreciation gets recaptured as ordinary income, whether it was ever claimed or not.

For a family that rented for three years and then sold, that can produce a five-figure tax bill that arrives like an uninvited houseguest.

How to Read Your Own Situation

Families whose monthly shortfall between rent and PITI exceeds what they can sustain at the new duty station should strongly consider selling, even at a loss. This is especially true when the new BAH rate is lower than the old one.

Some families will have a viable rent-and-hold case. Strong rental demand at the current duty station, a property manager with military-specific experience, three to six months of cash reserves, and a tour length of three or more years at the new posting are the conditions that make it work.

Without them, the first major maintenance event turns a manageable shortfall into a crisis.

Anyone sitting on significant equity, navigating a complex tax situation, or holding a home in a rapidly shifting market needs a CPA and a real estate attorney before signing anything. Not a blog post. Not a friend’s advice. A professional who can run the actual numbers on the actual property.

Whatever the situation, your starting point remains the same. Grab the sheet showing what selling actually clears, and a rental cash-flow estimate that includes management fees, vacancy, and maintenance. Nobody should be making this decision without both numbers in front of them.

Neither the market nor the PCS clock cares. What this community deserves is someone willing to do the honest math instead of selling a bumper sticker about resilience.

Brent Wachter took his $620,000, absorbed the loss, and moved. For his situation, that may have been exactly right. Every military homeowner this season faces the same question: Does their version of that story end the same way, or does the math run cleanly and without flinching, point somewhere else entirely?

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