Most houses here have carports because it is too expensive to build a garage. Also, most of the bathrooms have pedestal sinks instead of having a cabinet underneath or an actual counter top around the sink so there's space to place items (I am not bitter about this by the way). Another item that was commonly missing (that we really wanted) was a fenced yard. We didn't need the whole yard fenced necessarily but at least the back yard or a portion of the yard so the dogs could have access. This is one major reason we looked at housing off the base. None of the houses on the base have fenced yards. Apparently, many houses in town do not have fenced yards either!
On another note, one thing that a house really needs is typhoon shutters on all the windows and any glass doors! So there are two different types...you can either have the ones with flat panels that are a few inches wide. They have to be placed one at a time in a frame around each window and door, so they are time consuming to put up. The other type is an accordion shutter - they fold up on either side of the window or door when open and then you can just pull them closed and lock them to get ready for a typhoon. The accordion type are much easier to work with (provided they haven't rusted shut).
So with all this in mind, not to mention other details like looking for a place that is fairly close to the base and liking the other aspects of the house, these are most of the houses we looked at over the span of four days.
So after looking at many houses, we finally realized what the options for housing were on the island. The first day we went out, I think we both had the mindset of looking at houses in the states. By the time a week had gone by (and we had seen a couple houses on base) we had a better idea of what we could find. Ironically we ended up renting the very first house our Realtor showed us! So this is our house for the first year at least...we signed a year lease and we will see how it goes! It's a three bedroom two and a half bathroom house with a balcony off the master bedroom that looks over the front of the house. Here are some pics of the house:
