You have a posting message for Gagetown. This page is about what happens next — the deadlines, the house hunting trip, whether to buy or take a housing unit, and what actually gets reimbursed. If you want to know what homes cost here, that is on Oromocto real estate and Fredericton neighbourhoods.
Everything below was checked against Government of Canada sources in August 2026. Two things changed recently that most relocation pages have not caught up with, and both are in the first section.
Start here: two things that changed
1. It is not BGRS any more. As of 6 January 2026, SIRVA is the Contracted Relocation Service Provider. Files authorised before that date stay with BGRS; anything authorised on or after it goes to SIRVA. Their line is 1-877-433-4856, weekdays 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern.
2. It is not CFIRP any more either. The programme is the Canadian Armed Forces Relocation Directive (CAFRD), current edition effective 1 April 2026. If a page is still telling you about CFIRP and BGRS, its other details are probably stale too.
The funding structure also changed, and this one costs people money. There used to be three accounts. There are now two: Core and Custom. The Personalized Account is gone. And critically:
“Unused benefits payable from either Core Account or Custom Account funds are forfeited. They cannot be exchanged or assigned a monetary value to pay for other benefits or expenses.”
If you are working from advice about cashing out what you did not spend, that advice is out of date. Plan to use the entitlement, not to bank it.
Your deadlines, from the day the message lands
| What | By when |
|---|---|
| Register with SIRVA | 21 days from the posting message |
| Authorisation approval | Up to 5 days after the posting message |
| Elect the Real Estate Incentive, if you are keeping your home | 15 working days from receiving the appraisal — and the election is irrevocable |
| Incur relocation expenses | Within 2 years of your Change of Strength date |
| Submit a claim | Within 90 days of the activity |
The 21 days is the one people miss. Register first, then start looking.
House hunting trip — and the choice you make without realising it
You get either a House Hunting Trip or a Destination Inspection Trip. Not both.
- HHT — up to five days at destination, excluding travel. For members who have not secured accommodation. Core Account covers you plus your spouse or one dependant; additional dependants come from Custom.
- DIT — up to three days. For members who already have accommodation, property or a construction contract secured. No extensions.
- Extended HHT — up to four extra days, but on your own paid leave, and every eligible expense for those days comes out of the Custom Account.
- A second HHT is allowed if the first one is unsuccessful. Unused days from the first carry over.
What matters here is the definition the directive uses. “Secured accommodation” means “a binding contract for accommodations (purchase or rent/lease agreement) has been signed and all conditions have been met.” If you conduct an HHT and then move back into a home you already owned without securing something separate, the HHT is converted to a DIT and you repay the difference.
Reimbursed on the trip: travel, local transport, lodging, meals, incidentals, dependant care to a daily maximum, and $50 of phone and internet on an HHT ($30 on a DIT).
One thing I will not guess at for you. There is no rule in the directive about when during an HHT you may make an offer, or whether it must stay conditional. Ask SIRVA directly before you write, because the answer interacts with that “all conditions have been met” wording. I will structure the offer however your relocation advisor needs it.
Buy, or take a housing unit?
Canadian Forces Housing Agency has 1,422 residential housing units at Gagetown, and all of them are in the town of Oromocto, not on the base itself. Shelter charges as at mid-2026, excluding utilities:
| Bedrooms | Type | Units | Shelter charge / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Row | 15 | $968 – $1,181 |
| 2 | Semi-detached | 39 | $993 – $1,189 |
| 2 | Single | 290 | $846 – $1,433 |
| 3 | Row | 398 | $712 – $1,369 |
| 3 | Semi-detached | 130 | $898 – $1,236 |
| 3 | Single | 350 | $930 – $1,718 |
| 4 | Row | 49 | $777 – $1,383 |
| 4 | Semi-detached | 97 | $793 – $1,579 |
| 4 | Single | 54 | $1,016 – $1,686 |
Housing Services Centre Gagetown is at 15 Hazen Crescent, Oromocto — 506-446-3930. (Some Canadian Army pages still list 66 Broad Road and 1,496 units. Those pages were last updated in 2022. The figures above are from the CFHA page updated June 2026.)
Three things about housing units worth knowing before you decide
It is a licence, not a lease. The occupancy document states plainly that “no tenancy is established by this Licence. The various provincial Landlord and Tenant Acts do not apply.” You give 30 days’ written notice with a 60-day minimum occupancy, and the licence fee can change on three months’ written notice. That is a genuinely different legal position from renting.
Charges are not market rent, and they rise every May. They are set from Statistics Canada’s CPI for rented accommodation, adjusted 1 May each year, with increases capped at $100 a month for existing occupants. For 2026–27 the average increase was 5.1%, about $57 a month.
Availability is the real constraint. Eligibility is not entitlement. Allocation runs on four priority levels — first postings, compassionate postings, returns from overseas and training postings sit in Priority 1; most other members moving at public expense are Priority 2 — then by Change of Strength date and bedroom eligibility. Nationally, the Auditor General reported in October 2025 that against 3,706 active applications there were 205 units available for occupancy. CFHA does not publish waiting times by base, so nobody can honestly tell you how long Gagetown is. Apply as soon as you have your posting instruction, and have a plan B.
You cannot be ordered into a family housing unit. Occupancy is voluntary; the compulsion that exists applies to furnished single quarters when duty requires it, not to family RHUs.
What gets reimbursed if you buy or sell
From the Core Account, on a purchase: land transfer tax, deed transfer charges, sheriff’s fees, legal fees for the transfer, certificate of execution, appraisal and water-test fees required by the lender, and survey costs or title insurance — one or the other, not both. Also your first building inspection, one HVAC inspection, one well, water or septic inspection, and a follow-up radon, termite, pyrite or wood-basement inspection where one is recommended.
On a sale: real estate commission “not to exceed the pre-negotiated corporate rates”, mortgage discharge fees, deed transfer charges, a land survey if the last one is over five years old, and a similar list of inspections.
The commission point, said plainly. The directive does not publish a percentage or a dollar cap — it caps reimbursement at whatever rate SIRVA has negotiated. You are not obliged to use a REALTOR® from their network, provided the transaction is at arm’s length, but reimbursement is still capped at the network rate and you cover any difference. Ask SIRVA what the negotiated rate is for this area before you list. Anyone quoting you a figure without checking is guessing.
The three provisions that move real money
- Home Equity Assistance. If you sell for less than you paid, Core covers 80% of the reimbursable loss or $30,000, whichever is less, with the balance from Custom. It may have tax implications.
- Real Estate Incentive. If you keep your principal residence instead of selling, you can elect 80% of the commission on appraised value, to a maximum of $12,000. You need an appraisal, you must not have taken Temporary Dual Residence Assistance, and you have 15 working days to decide. It cannot be reversed.
- Mortgage Early Repayment Penalty. Core pays the lesser of three months’ interest or $5,000; Custom can take it to six months’ interest.
Also from Core: mortgage interest differential to $5,000, interest on a short-term loan up to 10% of the purchase price for two years, and Temporary Dual Residence Assistance for six months.
While you are between homes, Interim Lodgings, Meals and Miscellaneous covers up to three days at origin and two at destination, with full meal allowance for ten days and up to twenty more at 65% without receipts or 100% with them. Worth knowing: in a constrained real estate market, supplemental meal benefits can be extended with approval. Fredericton has been tight.
The housing differential
The Canadian Forces Housing Differential for Gagetown, Burton and Fredericton, effective 1 July 2026:
| Pay level | Monthly rate |
|---|---|
| 1 | $1,025 |
| 2 | $675 |
| 3 | $175 |
| 4 – 20 | $0 |
Apply through your Orderly Room on form DND 4899. Note that the Provisional Post-Living Differential ended 30 June 2026 — if your budget assumed it, redo the budget.
Two things about healthcare nobody mentions
The base clinic does not treat your family. 42 Canadian Forces Health Services Centre Gagetown, at 26 Champlain Avenue in Oromocto, serves CAF members only. Your spouse and children need civilian New Brunswick primary care, and family doctors here are not easy to come by. Get on the provincial patient registry the week you arrive, not the month you need someone.
But you skip the Medicare waiting period. New Brunswick normally applies a three-month wait for people arriving from another province. Not for you:
“The spouse or dependent of a regular member of the Canadian Armed Forces who has entered the province from another Canadian province or territory are entitled to first-day coverage providing they have established residence in the province of New Brunswick.”
Establish residence, apply immediately, and you are covered from day one.
Schools and childcare
Both Oromocto and Fredericton are in the Anglophone West School District. Oromocto’s grade structure splits elementary twice — K–2, then 3–5, then middle school 6–8 — so children change schools more often than in most districts. The full list is on the Oromocto page. Confirm the assignment for a specific civic address through the district’s BusPlanner tool before you commit to a house.
Military Family Services National Education Services has certified guidance counsellors who work with posted families on school transitions, credit equivalencies and interprovincial placement. Email education@cfmws.com. I have not found any evidence that Anglophone West operates a priority registration process for military families, so do not assume one exists.
Childcare in New Brunswick is fee-capped at designated facilities: since 1 May 2026, $19 a day full-time for infants under two and $16 a day for ages two to five. Subsidy is available where household income is $80,000 or less, applied for through the Parent Portal. Waiting lists are not published; start the search early.
If your spouse needs work
The Military Spousal Employment Network is the main federal route — a resume bank, employer partners, virtual career fairs and free personalised resume and interview coaching through CareerCOACH+. New Brunswick participates in Seamless Canada, which points spouses at NBjobs.ca and WorkingNB.
Military Family Services New Brunswick — renamed from the New Brunswick MFRC — runs relocation readiness workshops, family navigation, second-language training for adult family members, and mental health programmes. Reach them on 506-422-3352 or mfsnb@cfmws.com. Call rather than relying on an address you found online; the street address published on the older Army pages does not match their current material.
On credentials: New Brunswick has general labour-mobility and credential-recognition processes, but I could not find any military-spouse-specific fast track or fee waiver. If someone tells you one exists, ask them to show you where.
Where posted families actually end up
Oromocto is closest and has the housing units, and it is where most families land first. It is also not the cheap option — it benchmarks above the wider Fredericton market. The alternatives worth understanding before you commit:
- Oromocto — $431,700 benchmark. Closest to the base, town water bought from DND, hospital emergency department closes at 4 p.m.
- Lincoln — between Oromocto and Fredericton, and genuinely confusing: three places share the name across two municipalities with very different tax rates.
- Fredericton and the surrounding communities — 21 areas with benchmark prices, from the low $200,000s to the high $500,000s.
- Hanwell and New Maryland — further out, more land, and in Hanwell’s case wells and septic on every property.
On commute times: no government source publishes drive times from the surrounding communities to the base, so anything you read online is somebody’s estimate. Mine are too — but they are based on driving these roads, in February, for years. Ask me and I will tell you what a given address actually means for a 7 a.m. start.
Doing all of this from another province
Most of my posted clients have never stood in the house before they own it. That is normal here, not a favour, and it works when it is set up properly: video walkthroughs where I show you the things a listing photo hides, honest structural commentary because I came into real estate from residential construction, and conditions written so you are protected while you are 2,000 km away.
What I will not do is tell you a house is fine when it is not, because you cannot see it yourself and you are on a deadline. That is exactly when a buyer needs someone to slow them down.
Where to go from here
- Oromocto real estate — prices, schools, the water supply, flood risk and tax.
- Buying a home in Fredericton — deposits, conditions, closing costs and New Brunswick’s land transfer tax.
- First-time home buyers — if this is your first purchase, the federal programmes are on top of everything above.
- Fredericton neighbourhoods — 21 areas with benchmark prices.
- Moving to Fredericton — cost of living, wages, healthcare access and schools, with the parts most relocation guides leave out.
- Get in touch — I answer my own phone, and I am used to different time zones.
Every figure on this page was verified against Government of Canada or Government of New Brunswick sources in August 2026. Relocation policy changes — the service provider changed in January 2026 and the differential rates changed in July. Confirm anything money-related with SIRVA or your Orderly Room before you rely on it. I am a REALTOR®, not a relocation advisor.
