By Phyllis Domingo, REALTOR® · San Antonio Relocation Specialist · 4 min read San Antonio is a four-base town, and a PCS here means JBSA-Fort Sam Houston, JBSA-Lackland, JBSA-Randolph, or Camp Bullis. I just published the complete military relocation guide, and here is what is inside and why I wrote it.
If you have orders to San Antonio, you are about to join one of the largest military communities in the country, and I want your move to feel supported from day one. I am Phyllis Domingo, a San Antonio REALTOR® and relocation specialist with more than 20 years of local knowledge, and I have just published the guide I wish every family had before their first PCS here: the complete military relocation guide to PCSing in San Antonio.
Why this guide covers all four installations
A PCS to San Antonio is rarely a one-base question. Joint Base San Antonio is one of the largest joint bases in the Department of Defense, made up of four installations spread across the metro: JBSA-Fort Sam Houston on the northeast side, JBSA-Lackland on the west side, JBSA-Randolph in the northeast corridor, and Camp Bullis in the northwest Hill Country. Each has its own mission, its own gate, and its own set of neighborhoods, so the guide walks through all four, plus Kelly Field and Port San Antonio on the southwest side.
What is inside
The guide covers the whole move in one place:
- Where each installation sits in the metro and what its mission is, from the Army's medical hub at Fort Sam Houston to Basic Military Training at Lackland.
- The neighborhoods families actually use near each base, verified against local sources: Alamo Heights and Government Hill near Fort Sam, Valley Hi and Castroville near Lackland, Schertz and Universal City near Randolph, Helotes and Fair Oaks Ranch near Camp Bullis.
- On-base versus off-base housing, including the privatized housing partners and the honest truth about waitlists.
- BAH at a high level, with the official rate lookup so you can check your own number.
- Texas vehicle registration and driver license deadlines, school enrollment with the Interstate Compact, TRICARE and the military medical centers, and commissary and exchange locations.
- A realistic first-30-days checklist and a which-base-which-area wrap-up.
Every fact is sourced
Everything in the guide is verified against official sources, and the links open in a new tab: the base sites, the school districts, TxDMV and Texas DPS, TRICARE and Brooke Army Medical Center, the commissaries, and the JBSA Military & Family Readiness Centers. If a number could not be verified, I described the situation in words instead of guessing.
Read the guide
The complete military relocation guide covers the whole picture in one place, and it is written the way I would explain it to a neighbor: warm, honest, and free of pressure. When you are ready to talk neighborhoods, schools, or housing off base, I am a free, no-pressure call away at (210) 744-5478.
Sources
The numbers in this post were checked against these sources on October 30, 2026.
