Staying in temporary lodging for an extended amount of time after arriving at a new installation can take a toll on any military family, whether it's due to living without certain household luxuries or having to make do without a kitchen.

The Automated Housing Referral Network (AHRN.com), which is sponsored by the Department of Defense, is designed to improve the process of securing available housing for relocating military members and their families.

The site works with installation housing offices and local property owners to showcase a variety of homes, apartments and town homes available for sale or rental in areas around military installations around the world.

There are also listings for temporary lodging, shared rentals, for sale by owner and military-to-military sales.

Ahrn.com is also unique in that it offers on-base housing options as well, said Lisa Klinkhammer with R and B Communications, a Grass Valley, Calif. company which teamed up with Runzheimer International to develop and market the Web site.

"It has taken over base housing offices' referral systems and made all of the information available to the public through a dot com Web site," Klinkhammer said.

Users can check what is available in local communities by entering base housing allowances for the area, locations, square footage requirements and a host of other criteria.

"It gives you a quick snapshot so you can see what your options are," Klinkhammer said.

Users can customize searches based on up to 25 to 30 search criteria categories, including a tool that shows if a property has been inspected by officials in the installation's housing offices.

"That's why it's so unique," she said. "We're tied in with housing privatization and base housing offices."

The site also has a feature that allows multiple users to log in under the same name and share favorite properties. The feature allows spouses to all view marked favorites if they want to find housing in the same area, Klinkhammer said.

"It brings them together to share in that experience," she said.

David Fehrman and his wife Kimberly, a soldier at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, recently moved to the area from Louisiana, and used the site to help them choose a rental home in DuPont.

The couple wanted to find a house close to the base and used the site to narrow down their options to four places, based on square footage and proximity to the joint base.

"It took about 20 minutes to narrow the search," David, 42, said. "It was really easy to separate the search criteria."

Photos of the inside of the house finally clinched the decision for David and his wife, and the two moved in last month.

"I did it all over the Web," he said. "I only had to spend two days in a hotel while the house was being prepared for us."

The sheer volume of properties the site contains - as well as an automated expiration feature that keeps the listings fresh - gives military members more options.

"We want to help them minimize their stay in temporary housing, whether that means shortening it or eliminating it all together," Klinkhammer said.