My husband got his orders for PI for June/July. Anyone have any advice? I'm wanting to live on base. (either Beaufort or Parris Island doesnt matter to me) Bad idea or good idea? I hear that there is a very long wait for PI base housing. My husband is an E5. We have a daughter and 2 dogs. Where do you think would be the best place for us to live?  

Hi there! Welcome to BU! There isn't a waiting list for PI. When you apply for housing, you can put you want PI housing. If they don't have any, they will send you to Laurel Bay, or Naval Hospital housing. It's usually pretty hard to get housing on PI. All you can do is try, if that's what you really want. If your husband is going to the Drill Field, your chances are real good in getting one. When we lived on base, we lived in Freedom Sound. It's located inside Laurel Bay. The homes look like the ones on PI. The Laurel Bay homes are the brick, single-family homes. They're not that bad. You will hear different opinions, but I have seen nice ones. I never went to PI for anything b/c they don't have much, so it didn't make a difference to me if we lived there or not. Only time I went was for the commissary, lol. We live out in town now, because the drive from Laurel Bay started getting on my husbands nerves. We live in Port Royal now. There's a lot of rentals there, and in Lady's Island. Also, there's a really nice apartment community that accepts 2 pets(with restrictions), called The Preserve. Those are nice. It's really prefrence though. I have friends that live on PI who are DI Wives and love it b/c they're really involved with their husbands battalion, and I know girls who love living in Laurel Bay. I, personally, didn't mind living out in Laurel Bay. Good luck! Hope you stick around here with us :) 

Just try for PI housing...it is very hard to get...my husband is a DI and in his graduating class in September no one got PI housing..i think it just all depends. We live in Laurel Bay in a single home that is completely renovated..and we like. Sure it would be nice if we live on PI but what can ya do. I like it here on Laurel Bay because the schools are here so I am closer to the kids. 

HI! We just checked in down here (from Lejeune) on Jan 17th! We too had hoped to get onto PI but they didn't have any homes open. I wanted to wait for one but was told that we had to accept the house offered (which was out at Laurel Bay) or go off of the list for 30 days and then come back on at the bottom. No one from my hubby's DI class was able to move onto PI but hopefully there will be some open for you in June!! Is your hubby going to be a DI? If so, then you might want to consider renting out in town rather then going out to Laurel Bay. It's about a 25 minute drive from PI to Laruel Bay and with the hours they work it's a loooong drive. We chose to rent out on Lady's Island and will be trying to get onto PI after our lease is up out here. It takes my hubby about 20 minutes to get to work and he has to call me to talk to him on his way home as to help him not fall asleep. There isn't much on PI but we are wanting to move there simply to save him the drive. I have some friends that live out in Laurel Bay and they are happy there ... they both live in rennovated houses though. We were only offered ones that were going to be rennovated and we were going to have to live through them (not cool with a 2.5 year old and a 9 month old!!). I would just check the local area to have some back up ideas in case you can't get into PI housing and you aren't happy with LB housing. Where are you coming from? 

Well it's good to know there isn't a wait. I'll have to talk with the hubby to see what he says about living out in town if the drive is too far. So you say with traffic its about 20 mins from LB? That would actually be better than where we are now. lol He's not gonna be a DI. He'll be in the construction shop I believe. I wish I lived a little closer so I could just take a trip down to see everything for myself. lol We live out in town right now in Jacksonville/Halfmoon. I wouldn't mind having a rennovated house out in LB. Can you ask them for one or is that just luck? I know on Lejeune one of my friends told me that you can turn down 3 houses before they just stick you with one. I don't really see how that would work though with us living clear up in NC.. 

We moved here from cherry point, nc this past January into Laurel Bay, and I was NOT impressed with this house. Everybody keeps talking about how some are "renovated", but all that was done in ours was cheap pergo floors, new carpet in the bedrooms and a fresh coat of white paint on the walls before we moved in. And this was all they had for us. My kitchen is absolutely horrid. lol The laundry hookups are right in it, there is NO counter space, old outdated cabinets and appliances, ugly stained linoleum floors and ugly muave colored laminate counter tops. Yuck. We have 1 and a half baths, again, dated and tiny. We have a 2 yr old and a dog, so for us, we would like more space. The room size isn't THAT bad, but the living room and dining room space is tiny. Hubby is stationed on the air station not PI so we are house hunting in Bluffton which is about a 30 min drive away. Hubby is an E5, so our house buying budget doesn't go to far in beaufort, so that's what brought us out to bluffton. :) 

iluvmymarine....they must have not given you the completely renovated housing...in our house the whole inside is redone...all new bathrooms, kitchen and all...sorry about that. 

so I'm assuming that you cant ask for the completely renovated places.. that would be nice though if we got lucky enough to get one! does anyone know where I could look at pictures? I've seen what they have on the website, but there aren't any GOOD pictures, of the inside, exterior of the houses, back yards, etc.. I wish there would be! 

You CAN ask, but it doesn't really mean anything. My husband told the housing office he wanted a 3 bdroom, RENNOVATED house. And this is what we got when we arrived here. So we are pretty much stuck here until we find something better. There are few to no pics on the website and they are miss leading anyways. lol 

lol yeah I have actually been in contact with the housing office and they sent me pictures of the model home. Definitely not what I had originally pictured. Oh well.. Maybe we'll get lucky! 

Yay! We have our move in date! We'll be getting our keys to our house in Wake Village on June 18th!! 

I live in Laurel Bay. I have an un-rennovated house. I don't mind it. Except for the kitchen. We have no counterspace. But my 2 neighbors have un-rennovated homes also but their layout is different and they have ALOT of counterspace. They have a carport though. And we have a garage. Every home Ive been into that has a carport has more space in the kitchen. But the washer/dryer is in a closet outside in the carport. You also get a pretty decent size shed if you have a carport. I would rather have the carport if it meant I would have more space in my kitchen. But don't quote me on this. This is just what I have seen in some of my friends houses with carports. I live in Combahee Landing. But we will be moving in July. I think. You never know with the military. I hope you have a safe move. Oh and when my neighbor moved in they took her to a house and she hated it and requested to be shown another one with a different layout and they did and she liked it better. So try to remember that. I wish I would have done that. I guess it depends on what is available.