If you are an ex military family

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So DH is army and we've been lucky to live in the same posting for 9 years!
We've discussed maybe buying a house and pre COVID we did get accepted but it fell through because of said COVID. This house was closer to my family so I would have a better support network and not be on my own as much.
Now we've had time to mull things over and right now we're staying in quarters. If mortgage rates drop again then we may start looking for a house again. But we're torn on staying in quarters and living cheaply and being able to travel more or having a house of our own and not necessarily being able to afford holidays for a while until I'm working again.
Our worry is that if we stay in quarters throughout DH entire career then where does that leave us when he leaves? Will we have to rent? Is it worth even buying when we're 65+? Do we just save as much as we can so we have a big sum of money for a house when he leaves?
We have 2 DC too so we have to take them in to account of course

My husband's parents lived in married quarters until my FIL retired but they owned houses and rented them out - the rent covered the mortgage payments and it meant they had a lot of options once he was out. A few of my husband's friends have done the same - lived in quarters but bought a house and rented it out, one set of friends deliberately chose an area with good schools to buy in and then they "officially" moved out of quarters and in to that house before the kids started school.

Bit different for us, we bought and never lived in quarters as my husband was RMP so every posting was a lottery as to where he'd end up and I needed to be in one place for my career. He left quite swiftly after we were married in the end so that worked out well!

Renting out a house isn't something we want to do. I see why a lot of people do it though. There will probably be overseas postings for us at some point so I'm not sure what happens then?
Our friends have a house they rent out but they've been posted to the Middle East so I don't really know how they are managing it

We bought a house and have rented it out via an agency who takes care of everything but they are quite expensive. As an army family you need something ready for when you leave or you may need to be renting a home after you've left the army; which is fine but has it's own set of issues. The lump sum could be used as your deposit though when you leave but it could be used to bring down your mortgage payments at retirement if you already owned a place.
We have a modern flat so minimum hassle, low costs, little repairs and an agency manages the maintenance of the building.
It doesn't have to be a forever home for you, just a sensible purchase to get onto the property ladder.

We own one house which we rent out, and buying another which I'll live in with kids while DH weekly commutes. It's got to the stage it's too disruptive on their education to keep moving (my 9yo is on her sixth home, 7yo on her fifth, and they've attended three schools in three countries), and boarding school isn't suitable for our eldest (the younger one would happily go tomorrow). A letting agency looks after the house, with PILs being the point of contact for the agency as we aren't always available. We aren't moving into that house due to schools.

Your other option is to save money each month and not touch it... But house prices would probably continue to rise.

As far as I know we can't use the forces HTB on a property we plan to let out so I can't see it being an option right now. We do have a small amount of money saved but we were hoping to not touch that as it's an emergency fund

Would you like to buy a home and settle down rather than army quarters and always moving? Lots of families do it and I'm sure you could use HTB. It's such a hard decision to make. We've spent 15 years going round in circles about putting down roots. Even put an offer in on a house and had it accepted once but then we u-turned for various reasons and still in lovely magnolia quarters!

There's a lot of positives to having our own home but I don't want DH to only see the DC at the weekend. It would be great to never have to look at magnolia again.
I feel like we're lucky to be able to travel around so much when most people stay in one place their whole life. But army life isn't forever 🤷🏽‍♀️
I suppose one of our options is to just save while we can then put down a huge payment on a house one day?

Buy a property and let it out as a managed let through letting agent. The letting agent will then take care of everything practical, and you just wait for the money to come in.

It means you’d build some equity, and when you were ready to live in a non-military house you could sell it and buy where you want to live.

Saving up and waiting until your DH leaves the forces is not a good idea financially, because house prices (in the long term) will outstrip the interest on the savings.

I don't recommend just saving up and buying when he leaves.

We bought a small rental property early on in our marriage. When I decided enough was enough 20 years later we flogged the rental which gave us a good deposit on our own place. When he finally leaves the gratuity will more than pay off the mortgage.

OP you can use FHTB and rent it out if you live in it but then get posted more than 50 miles away, they'll even reimburse your legal fees, so you could buy for one posting and then rent it out when you need to move away, you will have to pay some interest on the loan though. This even applies to the government help to buy scheme. We bought with FHTB 3 years ago but have managed to mortgage it out already so aren't tied to any stipulations of it now (we moved house within 50 miles so couldn't keep it, obviously we would have done if we could as it's interest free, but the point is we built enough equity to pay it off early), taking it now doesn't mean you are tied to it until he retires.

We bought and DH commutes, not had to do unaccompanied yet, I agree that's not what I wanted for my family but no I wouldn't risk leaving it too late. It'll all depend on when your DH is planning to retire, if it's 40s then hopefully with the payout and savings you'd have a sizeable deposit for a small mortgage, but if you're talking 50s-60s that's leaving it very late and house prices are likely to outstrip your savings.