OHA Explained: How the Overseas Housing Allowance Works

Members arriving at their first overseas assignment usually expect their housing allowance to behave the way it did stateside, and it does not. The OHA calculator prices your own locality and grade against the current DTMO tables; this page is the rule behind the number — the three components an OHA payment is made of, how each one is computed, the dates it starts and stops, and the costs people assume it covers and it does not.

Everything below is read from the DoD Financial Management Regulation, Volume 7A, Chapter 26 (Housing Allowances), May 2025 revision, and from 37 U.S.C. § 403(c), which is the statute the chapter implements. Paragraph numbers are given so you can check any sentence against the source. If you have gone looking for these rules in the Joint Travel Regulations and not found them, that is because they are not there: the JTR governs travel and transportation, and the housing allowances live in Volume 7A instead.

What Is OHA, and How Does It Differ From BAH?

OHA is a monthly allowance that offsets housing costs for a member authorized to live in private-sector leased or owned housing at an overseas permanent duty station. The difference from BAH is the whole point: OHA is based on cost reimbursement (FMR Ch. 26, para. 6.1). BAH pays a flat rate for your grade and location whatever your rent is. OHA pays your actual rent, up to a ceiling set for your locality and grade — so the ceiling is a cap, not a payment.

The rest follows from that one sentence:

• Rent below the ceiling costs you nothing and gains you nothing. You are reimbursed what you pay, and the unused ceiling is not yours.
• Rent above the ceiling comes out of your pocket, every month, for the length of the lease.
• A rent change re-opens the computation. The FMR is one line on this: re-compute OHA if and when the rent changes (para. 6.2.3).

The ceilings themselves are set by OUSD (P&R) from data provided by OCONUS commanders and actual rent data drawn from the pay systems, and they are designed to cover actual rental costs for 80% of the members assigned to a location (para. 6.1). Read that design point the way it is written: it is not a promise that your rent will be covered, and by construction about one member in five at a given locality is paying something out of pocket. Ceilings are published in local currency and converted at the exchange rate printed on the table, so the dollar figure can move without your rent, your ceiling or your grade changing.

The Three Components of an OHA Payment

Para. 6.1.4 names three, and they are computed by different rules and paid on different schedules. Treating them as one number is the most common way to mis-budget an overseas move.

Component	Paid	Based on
Monthly rental allowance	Monthly	Your actual rent, capped at the locality and grade ceiling
Utility and recurring maintenance allowance	Monthly	A flat locality figure, adjusted for what your rent already includes
Move-In Housing Allowance (MIHA)	Once per dwelling, per tour	A fixed locality amount, plus four reimbursable types

When Does OHA Start, and When Does It Stop?

OHA does not start when you land, and it does not start when your orders say you report. It starts on the day you incur a financial obligation for private-sector housing — in practice, your lease start date — assuming you meet the other criteria (para. 2.2.1.1). One exception sits on top of that: if you are authorized MALT Plus on your reporting day, OHA eligibility starts the day after you report, and OHA is not payable for the arrival day itself (paras. 2.2.1.1 and 6.1.2).

The gap between arriving and signing is not unpaid — it is the TLA calculator's territory, not OHA's, and the two do not overlap.

Stopping is a list rather than a rule. Unless an extension is authorized under para. 10.2, or the move is a close-proximity PCS, OHA stops on any of the following — in practice, whichever comes first (para. 2.2.1.2):

• The day your OHA lease ends.
• The day before you depart on a PCS order.
• The day before your assigned ship or unit changes home port from OCONUS — with a carve-out for a member without dependents whose ship has not sailed and has no quarters available, who keeps the old home port's allowance until they move back aboard.
• On assignment to government quarters. The boundary is exact: a housing allowance accrues through the day before you are assigned quarters or begin to occupy them (para. 8.1.4), and picks back up from the day the assignment ends or the quarters are vacated, where vacating is approved (para. 8.1.5).

Two of those are worth planning around. If your lease ends before your PCS departure date, OHA stops at the lease end date and not at the flight, so a lease that runs out early leaves a gap you cover yourself. And because OHA starts at the lease rather than at arrival, a slow housing search costs you nothing in OHA — it spends TLA days instead, and TLA for an initial OCONUS assignment ordinarily should not exceed 60 days, with any additional period authorized in increments of 15 days or fewer and only for reasons outside your control (FMR Ch. 68, para. 4.6.1).

How Is the Monthly Rental Allowance Computed?

Two figures, and you are paid the smaller (para. 6.2.2):

• With dependents: the lesser of your reported rent or the maximum allowable rent for your grade at your PDS locality.
• Without dependents: the lesser of your reported rent or 90% of that same maximum.

Note where the 90% sits. It reduces the ceiling, not the payment — a member without dependents whose rent is under the reduced ceiling is still reimbursed the full rent.

What counts as rent is more specific than most leases are. The amount used is the rent stated in the lease or in another written agreement between landlord and tenant (para. 6.2.1), and then:

• A recurring condominium or homeowners association fee you pay is prorated monthly and added to the rent (para. 6.2.1.1).
• A separate lease for parking at or near the housing is added to the rent. Parking at the duty location is not (para. 6.2.1.5).
• If the landlord will refund all or substantially all of a prepaid lump sum at the end of the lease, the rent used is zero (para. 6.2.1.3). The arrangement is common in a few overseas markets and it pays no OHA.
• If you or your dependent live with relatives or friends who own the dwelling, the rent is zero even if a lease exists, and there is no authority to pay MIHA or the utility allowance either (para. 6.2.1.4). The exception is a bona fide standard written lease where the owner does not live there and regularly rents the property out.

Sharers

Members who share a dwelling divide the total monthly rent by the number of sharers occupying it, and each is authorized up to the ceiling for a member without dependents unless accompanied by one or more dependents, in which case the with-dependents ceiling applies to that sharer (paras. 6.2.4 and 6.2.1.2). Each sharer's OHA is their prorated share of the rent or their own ceiling, whichever is less, plus a prorated utility allowance (para. 6.2.4.1).

MIHA splits the other way, and the split is worth knowing before you agree who claims what. Every sharer authorized MIHA receives the full MIHA/Miscellaneous allowance, not a prorated share (paras. 6.2.4.2 and 6.4.4) — but for MIHA/Rent, MIHA/Security, MIHA/Infectious Diseases and MIHA/Safety, only one sharer may claim the expense (para. 6.4.4). One more edge worth naming: a renter occupying a completely separate unit of an owner-occupied multiplex owned by another service member is not a sharer, and their OHA is computed as if the unit were unattached (para. 6.2.4.3).

Housing you own

Owning overseas does not end OHA; it changes how "rent" is derived. The monthly figure is the actual purchase price divided by 120 — not an appraised value, and excluding settlement costs, title search fees and other legal costs (para. 6.2.5.1). A few consequences follow from that formula:

• An installment or equity loan taken out to renovate or repair the dwelling is added to the purchase price and the total re-divided by 120, effective from the loan start date (para. 6.2.5.2.3). A loan to furnish or decorate — the FMR's example is adding a hot tub or a pool — does not count, and neither does a credit card or line of credit (para. 6.2.5.2.2).
• A dwelling that was inherited or otherwise received without purchase has a purchase price of $0, so no rental allowance accrues — but the member is still authorized the utility and recurring maintenance allowance. If you then take a mortgage on the inherited property specifically for home improvements, or a loan to pay inheritance tax on it, that cost may be used as an OHA housing cost (para. 6.2.5.3).
• For a multiplex you own, the allowance is the purchase price times the percentage of square footage you and your dependents occupy, divided by 120. Your tenants in the other units are not sharers (para. 6.2.5.4).
• A mobile home or boat adds the monthly lot rental or berthing fee to the computed amount (para. 6.2.5.5).

Do You Keep the Difference If Your Rent Is Under the Ceiling?

No. This is the single most expensive misunderstanding an incoming OCONUS family can carry over from a CONUS tour, and it runs in both directions. Because the allowance is the lesser of rent and ceiling, finding a cheaper apartment does not put money in your pocket the way it does under BAH — it lowers your OHA by the same amount. And because the ceiling is a cap rather than a promise, signing a lease above it means paying the excess yourself for as long as you hold the lease.

The practical rule that falls out: check the ceiling for your grade and locality before you sign anything, and treat the utility allowance as a separate budget line rather than a cushion. Ceilings move on DTMO's own schedule — station allowance changes post on the 1st and 16th of each month — so a figure you were quoted at in-processing may not be the one in force on your signing date.

The Utility and Recurring Maintenance Allowance, and the Point Score Behind It

It is a separate monthly amount, one figure per locality, set from the reported expenses of with-dependent members who pay all or most of their own utilities, and sized to cover utility costs for 80% of the members assigned to the area (para. 6.3.1). Two adjustments apply to who gets what:

• A member without dependents who is not a sharer receives 75% of the with-dependent rate.
• Sharers receive a prorated amount of the net allowance.

The interesting rule is what happens when your rent already includes utilities. The amount included is withheld from the utility allowance and then added to the rental allowance ceiling before your rent is compared against it (para. 6.3.2). So an all-inclusive rent does not cost you the utility component — it moves it. If rent includes all utilities you receive no utility allowance, but the whole figure is added to your rental ceiling (para. 6.3.2.1).

Where rent covers only some utilities, the split is decided by a point score rather than by receipts. Every locality carries a climate code — 1 (cold: long-term mean of 45°F or colder), 2 (moderate), or 3 (hot: long-term mean of 69°F or warmer, unless one or more months drops to 45°F or colder, which makes it a 2) — and the code sets the point value of each utility you pay yourself (FMR Table 26-15):

Utility you pay yourself	Code 1 (cold)	Code 2 (moderate)	Code 3 (hot)
Electricity	3	3	3
Heating	3	2	1
Air conditioning	1	2	3
Water	1	1	1
Trash disposal	1	1	1

Add the points for everything not included in your rent, then read the percentage off Table 26-16:

Total utility points	Percentage of the utility allowance paid
0	0%
1 to 2	25%
3 to 4	65%
5 to 9	100%

The steps are coarse on purpose, and the coarseness is worth working through before you compare two apartments. A lease that covers everything except the air conditioning scores 1 point in a Code 1 locality — 25% of the allowance — and 3 points in a Code 3 locality, which is 65%. Same lease, same appliance, more than double the payment, because the climate code changed. At the other end, paying your own electricity, air conditioning and trash disposal reaches 5 points in any locality, and 5 points is the full 100%. Whatever percentage you are not paid is added to your rental ceiling instead, so the two components move against each other rather than simply canceling out.

What Does MIHA Cover — and What Does It Not?

MIHA partially defrays the cost of moving into private-sector housing, leased or owned. It is not payable to a member in government or government-leased housing, it does not cover move-out costs (para. 6.4.1), and you must be eligible for OHA to receive any of it (para. 6.4.3.1). There are five types (para. 6.4.2):

Type	How it is paid	What it is for
MIHA/Miscellaneous	Fixed lump sum, with your first OHA rental payment	Average expenditure to make a dwelling habitable at that locality; all members receive the full amount, with or without dependents
MIHA/Rent	Reimbursement, with receipts	One-time, nonrefundable charges levied by a landlord, agent or foreign government that are customary, reasonable, and required in order to occupy the dwelling
MIHA/Security	Reimbursement, with receipts	Security modifications to the dwelling in designated locations, to reduce exposure to terrorist or criminal threat
MIHA/Infectious Diseases	Reimbursement, with receipts	Upgrades to prevent infectious disease in designated locations — the FMR's example is window screens against mosquito-borne illness
MIHA/Safety	Reimbursement, with receipts	Safety upgrades where the member must meet the requirements in 15 FAM 971.1, in designated locations

The claim form is DD Form 2556 for all five, submitted with documentation and itemized receipts for the four reimbursable types (para. 6.4.3.2). Only one dwelling per tour draws MIHA, unless a government-funded local move puts you in another OHA-covered dwelling (para. 6.4.3.3), and there is no MIHA at all for a non-government-funded local move, for complying with a PCS order while staying in the same dwelling, or for moving from government quarters into private-sector housing for separation or retirement (para. 6.4.3.4).

Now the part that is worth reading twice, because it is where MIHA is most often assumed to reach and does not. FMR Table 26-17 splits move-in costs into reportable and non-reportable MIHA/Miscellaneous items. Reportable covers the fittings a bare overseas dwelling tends to lack — cabinets, plumbing hookups, gas or electrical installation, supplementary heating, light fixtures, wardrobes, shelving, a range or refrigerator or washer, air conditioners, transformers and voltage regulators, screening, and locally required security bars or water filters. Not reportable: rugs, carpets, curtains and drapes; lawn and garden maintenance; dishwashers, microwaves and small appliances; televisions and cable installation; light bulbs; fencing and yard items; your own labor; taxes unless the lease requires them — and, the one that catches people, any recoverable deposit, including a security deposit.

Security Deposits and Advance Rent: the OHA Advance

A refundable deposit is not an allowance, because you get it back. The mechanism for it is an advance of OHA, which is money you repay. 37 U.S.C. § 403(c)(3) authorizes a lump-sum payment for required deposits and advance rent, and requires the Secretary concerned to recoup the full amount, including any gain from currency movement between payment and recoupment. The FMR implements it at para. 6.7:

• The senior officer in country, or their designee, may authorize an advance for advance rent of fewer than four months, security deposits, or MIHA-related expenses. Personal preference is not grounds for one (para. 6.7.1.1).
• Advances of four to twelve months' rent are limited to locations OUSD (P&R) has approved, and only where law, universal local custom, or market conditions confirmed by the U.S. embassy require it (para. 6.7.1.2).
• No advance is authorized for a lease where you live rent-free after a one-time payment expected to be refunded at the end (para. 6.7.1.1) — the same arrangement that computes a rent of zero.
• The advance may not exceed the lesser of your anticipated housing expenses or the OHA expected to accrue over your tour at that PDS (para. 6.7.2).
• Repayment normally runs at one-twelfth per month over twelve months, starting the first day of the month after the advance is paid (para. 6.7.3.1). Collection can be postponed up to three months with justification, and repayment stretched beyond a year but never past your tour (para. 6.7.3.2).
• Repayment of advance rent, or of a security deposit of $500 or more, can be postponed until you vacate the housing where earlier repayment would be an excessive economic burden (paras. 6.7.3.3 and 6.7.3.4).
• If the landlord returns the money to you rather than to the government, recoupment of that lump sum starts immediately once your Service learns you have vacated; any balance the landlord did not return may, if you want it that way, be repaid in monthly installments over the months left on your existing schedule (para. 6.7.3.5).

One rule inside the advance runs in your favor, and it is the one place in the OHA program where a currency swing is explicitly not the member's loss. On a security deposit advance, your Service absorbs any loss caused by exchange-rate movement when the advance is liquidated — and you pay the Service any gain (para. 6.7.3.6). The downside is covered and the upside is not, which is the opposite of how members usually assume a foreign-currency deposit works.

Budget accordingly: the deposit is a cash-flow problem the government will help you bridge, not a cost it absorbs. And whenever the choice exists, the FMR's own preference is to pay rent month to month rather than in advance (para. 6.7).

The Paperwork: DD Form 2367

The authorizing document for both OHA and FSH-O is DD Form 2367, the OHA Report (para. 2.2.1). You complete and submit it for approval, and payment requires a lease agreement or a verifiable purchase price (para. 6.1.1) — which is why nothing accrues on the strength of orders alone. Approval authority is the senior officer of the uniformed services in the country concerned, or the individuals or offices that officer designates for the purpose.

Three details on the form are worth knowing before you fill it in.

• Report where you actually live. The housing you report must be the residence you occupy and commute to and from work from daily (para. 6.1.1.1).
• Two cases report a dependent's residence instead (para. 6.1.1.2): where you are on an unaccompanied tour and your dependents live OCONUS outside the PDS vicinity, and where you hold a Secretarial waiver authorizing OHA for a dependent who lives separately.
• Dollar-equivalency leases need a specific remark. If local law or custom forces you to pay rent at a fixed exchange rate for the life of the lease, your commanding officer or designee must enter the statement "Dollar equivalency contract required. No other housing option available to the Service member." in Part C, Remarks, and you enter the monthly rent accordingly (para. 6.1.1.3).

A rent change means a new computation, so the form is not a one-time errand: re-report when the rent moves (para. 6.2.3).

When OHA Is Not the Allowance You Get

Several overseas situations look like OHA and are not:

• An unaccompanied tour with dependents. A member with dependents on an unaccompanied OCONUS tour who is not provided government quarters and must obtain private-sector housing draws FSH-O, the OCONUS family separation housing allowance, not OHA (para. 6.1.1). It is close but not identical: FSH-O pays up to the without-dependent OHA rate for your grade and PDS, and the OHA rules for the rental allowance, the utility allowance, MIHA and advances all apply to it (para. 7.3.2). So everything on this page still governs the computation; only the ceiling changes.
• The gap before you have a lease. Temporary lodging overseas is TLA, a separate allowance with its own daily computation. See TLE vs TLA for which one applies on each side of the move, and the TLA calculator for the daily figure.
• The cost of everything that is not housing. That is OCONUS COLA, and the distinction is written into its own definition: COLA offsets the higher price of goods and services excluding housing, to equalize purchasing power against a CONUS assignment (FMR Ch. 68, para. 1.1). It is paid as a daily rate and it has nothing to do with your lease. If your overseas pay went up and your rent had not changed, COLA is the usual reason.
• Government trailers and Rental Guarantee Housing. No housing allowance is payable to a member occupying housing built under the Rental Guarantee Housing Program or a government trailer purchased under the statutes named in para. 6.8, unless the chapter says otherwise elsewhere.
• Costs no ordinary OHA computation reaches. Some locations carry an OHA Unique Expense — a lump-sum, dollar-for-dollar reimbursement for a specifically authorized expense at designated locations. Only a major command can request one through OUSD (P&R); individual members cannot (paras. 6.6 and 6.6.1).

And one situation that looks like a conflict and is not. If your spouse is a DoD civilian receiving a Living Quarters Allowance, you are still entitled to OHA at the with-dependent rate (para. 6.9). Volume 7A has no authority over LQA eligibility at all — that is the spouse's civilian personnel office and DSSR § 130 — so a finance office treating the LQA as a bar to your with-dependent OHA is reading the wrong regulation.

Rate Protection, Currency, and Why Your OHA Moved

37 U.S.C. § 403(c)(2) protects the overseas housing allowance in a narrow but useful way: so long as a member keeps uninterrupted eligibility and their actual monthly housing cost is not reduced, the monthly amount may not be reduced because housing costs in the area changed or because the member was promoted. The same paragraph says plainly what is not protected — the amount "may be adjusted to reflect changes in currency rates."

Note where that rule lives. Chapter 26 writes out rate protection for BAH at para. 5.2 and does not restate the overseas version, so the authority for it is the statute itself. It is worth citing by number if a ceiling revision is ever applied against an unchanged rent.

The currency half explains most of the OHA questions finance offices field. Your rent did not change, your grade did not change, your locality's ceiling did not change, and the allowance still moved in dollars — because the ceiling is denominated in euro, yen, won or pounds and the exchange rate applied to it is republished each pay period. The dollar amount is an output, not the rate.

There is a second, narrower protection for members holding advance rent. In countries that have been through a significant currency swing, DTMO maintains rent-protected locality codes, and protection is worked out by comparing the OHA rate at the exchange rate in effect when the advance was received against the greater of the rental allowance in force at the time of the advance or any higher rental allowance implemented during the repayment period (para. 6.7.4). Where that protection is in place, monthly rents for an advance are processed in dollars. It is not universal — it attaches to specific locality codes — so it is a question for your finance office rather than an assumption.

Is OHA Taxable?

No. IRS Publication 3, the Armed Forces' Tax Guide, lists OHA by name among the government pay items excluded from gross income, alongside BAH, BAS and "housing and cost-of-living allowances abroad paid by the U.S. Government or by a foreign government." Move-in housing is listed in the same table under excluded moving allowances, together with dislocation allowance, temporary lodging expense and temporary lodging allowance. None of it reaches your W-2, and none of it is reported as income.

Where to Find Your Own Ceiling

The OHA calculator takes a country, locality and grade and returns the ceiling with the exchange rate applied. If you would rather read the whole table for a country — every locality DTMO prices, in local currency, with the footnotes that say which towns a locality covers — the country pages carry it:

• Germany OHA rates — including the Kaiserslautern Military Community, which is where Ramstein is priced
• Japan OHA rates and South Korea OHA rates
• Italy OHA rates, Spain OHA rates and United Kingdom OHA rates
• Guam OHA rates — the one table already denominated in dollars, so no exchange rate moves it

One quirk of DTMO's tables is worth knowing before you read one: the columns are grade groups, so your grade may be priced under another grade's heading — see the first item in the checklist below. Most tables stop at O-6, and O-7 and above are read from the O-6 column.

Before You Sign a Lease

1. Look up the ceiling for your own grade and locality, not the one a sponsor quoted. Grades share columns on DTMO's tables in ways that surprise people — W-5 prices at O-5, W-4 and W-3 and O-3E at O-4, W-2 and O-2E and O-1E at O-3, W-1 at O-2, and E-2 and E-1 at E-3.
2. If you have no dependents, apply the 90% before you compare, and remember the utility allowance drops to 75% as well if you are not a sharer.
3. Ask exactly which utilities the rent includes, then score the points. The percentage moves in jumps — 0, 25, 65, 100 — not smoothly, so one utility can be worth 40 points of allowance or none at all.
4. Add the HOA fee and any separate parking lease to the rent before comparing it with the ceiling, because the computation will.
5. Plan the deposit as cash you will repay, not as an allowance.
6. Match the lease end date to your expected departure. OHA stops when the lease ends, not when you fly, so a lease that expires early is a gap you pay for.
7. Get DD Form 2367 in early. The lease or verifiable purchase price is what starts payment; nothing accrues on the strength of orders alone.
8. Re-check the ceiling on the day you sign. Station allowance changes post on the 1st and 16th.

Sources

Every OHA rule on this page — the cost-reimbursement basis and the 80% design point, the start and stop dates, the three components, the lesser-of computation and the 90% without-dependents ceiling, the rent-determination rules, sharers, owned and inherited housing, the utility and recurring maintenance allowance with its climate codes and point score, the five MIHA types, the reportable and non-reportable move-in items, the advance-payment authority and its repayment and currency terms, the OHA Unique Expense, DD Forms 2367 and 2556, FSH-O, the LQA rule and the government-quarters boundary — is DoD 7000.14-R, Financial Management Regulation, Volume 7A, Chapter 26, "Housing Allowances," May 2025 revision. The specific paragraphs are 2.2.1, 6.1 through 6.10, 7.3.2, 8.1.4 and 8.1.5, with Tables 26-15, 26-16 and 26-17. The chapter was downloaded from the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) on 10 September 2026 and every paragraph cited above was read from it.

OCONUS COLA's definition — that it covers goods and services excluding housing — is the same regulation, Chapter 68, "OCONUS COLA and Temporary Lodging Allowance," January 2025 revision, para. 1.1; the initial-assignment TLA limits are para. 4.6.1 of the same chapter. Chapter 68's own para. 1.2 records that it carries policy previously cited in JTR Chapter 9, which is part of why station allowances are no longer found in the Joint Travel Regulations.

The statutory authority, the rate-protection rule, and the lump-sum authority for deposits and advance rent are 37 U.S.C. § 403(c), read on the same date. The tax treatment is IRS Publication 3 (2025), Armed Forces' Tax Guide, Table 2, "Servicemembers' Government Pay Items Excluded From Gross Income," also read on that date.

The rate tables themselves are DTMO's. This site's OHA figures are built from the workbooks published on DTMO's OHA Rate Lookup — one per country plus the Appendix K Part II exchange rate table — and the snapshot date is shown on the calculator and on each country page. Because DTMO posts station allowance changes on the 1st and 16th of each month, and because the exchange rate applied to a ceiling is republished each pay period, confirm the current figure against DTMO or your housing office before you commit to a lease. No dollar amount on this page is a rate: the thresholds quoted are the regulation's, and the ceilings live in the tables.

Related: the OHA calculator prices your locality and grade, the OCONUS PCS move guide puts OHA in the sequence of an overseas move, BAH explained covers the allowance OHA replaces while you are overseas, and finding housing near your duty station covers the search itself.