Our methodology
Every badge on this site means something specific. This page is the key — what each label actually claims, and what it deliberately does not.
Installation profile tiers
Not every installation is built out to the same depth, and the badge on its listing says so directly rather than hiding the difference.
Every installation on the site has this much, at minimum: branch, location, population, and a BAH cost index.
No neighborhoods, schools, or local intelligence yet.
Neighborhoods, school districts, median home price, and a reviewed last-verified date.
Has at least one neighborhood entry and a lastVerified date on file.
Everything in Verified, plus a mission summary and Local Intelligence — traffic, weather, flood risk, insurance, and veteran resource notes specific to that installation.
Has both a mission summary and at least one Local Intelligence entry.
See it in practice on the installation directory, where every card carries its actual tier.
The four trust labels
Individual facts within an installation page — a commute time, a Local Intelligence note, a housing-market figure — carry one of four labels, always paired with a plain-language note explaining what it means for that specific fact.
| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| Verified | Confirmed against a named source as of the date shown. |
| Editorial guidance | Written and reviewed by our panel, not pulled from an external dataset — general guidance, not a specific verified number. |
| Estimated | Calculated from a formula or a representative sample table, clearly not a live feed. |
| Live data — coming soon | Marks a section we intend to connect to a real-time source but haven't yet — an honest placeholder, not a hidden gap. |
What “Verified” and “Estimated” mean on the calculators
The BAH Calculator uses real, DFAS-sourced 2026 with-dependents BAH rates for 32 of the 33 installations with a full BAH rate table — the other 145 of the site’s 178 installations are “Core data” tier and don’t appear in the calculator yet (see the tier table above), so showing another base’s real number for them wouldn’t be an honest estimate. Rates are looked up per pay grade against each installation’s actual Military Housing Area (MHA) — this is a genuine upgrade from the flat cost-index model the calculator used before. Fort Bliss is the one exception: our source’s full rate table failed to load, so its figures are interpolated from three real anchor points (E-5, E-7, O-3) using a comparable market’s grade curve, and its badge reads “Estimated” rather than “Verified” accordingly.
Without-dependents figures carry an “Estimated” badge everywhere on the site. We were not able to source a real without-dependents rate per installation and pay grade, so those numbers are calculated from the one real figure DoD has published nationally: the 2026 national-average E-5 rate is $1,581/mo with dependents and $1,380/mo without, an 87.3% ratio applied here to each installation’s real with-dependents rate. That’s a reasonable estimate, not a verified installation-specific number — for an exact figure, use the official DoD BAH Rate Lookup.
The Buy vs. Rent Calculator uses standard 30-year fixed mortgage math plus a flat estimate for taxes and insurance, and its rent field is estimated from a general price-to-rent ratio unless a specific installation’s own figure is used instead — it still carries an “Illustrative” badge.
None of this is meant to replace an actual quote from DFAS, a lender, or a property manager — it is meant to be close enough, and transparent enough about its assumptions, to run a real decision through before you get those quotes.
How content gets reviewed
Installation profiles, guides, and VA loan content are each attributed to a review panel and carry a last-verified date wherever that review has happened. The panels behind this site’s content are:
- Military spouse SME panel
- Veteran real estate panel
- PCS relocation panel
- VA lending panel
- Legal review panel
A last-verified date reflects when that specific section was last checked — it does not mean every fact on the page was re-verified on that date. Older dates are a signal to double-check time-sensitive figures (rates, fees) directly, the same way you should for any third-party source.
Where this data comes from today
Neighborhood, school, and builder data on CaptainMTG today is representative sample content, structured to match what a real CMS or live data feed would return. BAH with-dependents rates are the first exception — those are real, DFAS-sourced 2026 figures, refreshed by hand rather than by a live feed. That structure is deliberate: connecting an automated DFAS BAH feed, a real installation directory, or an MLS listings feed is a data change, not a redesign, when the time comes.
We would rather be upfront that a figure is illustrative than have it look verified when it isn’t. If something on the site looks wrong or out of date, treat the badge next to it as the first thing to check.