“The houses were small and antiquated,” said General Bender, who lived in the military-run housing on a previous tour here in the early 2000s. “There were no upgrades, and they were struggling to keep up the maintenance, but failing. I wouldn’t say it was unsafe, but it certainly was no great shakes.”

So McGuire joined dozens of other bases across the country in taking advantage of the Military Housing Privatization Initiative passed by Congress in 1996, which opened the door for private developers to upgrade the housing stock. Under the initiative’s rules, the developers build or renovate military homes, which they own and rent out to military personnel, and continue to manage and maintain for the next 50 years. As of February 2012, there were 105 of these privatized housing projects nationwide, with a total 191,905 homes, according to the Department of Defense.

At the McGuire-Fort Dix development, nearly 95 percent of the housing is occupied by military members and their families, with a waiting list of up to a year for some of the 106 detached homes, according to Michael Haydinger, a principal of United Communities and one of three brothers managing the operation. Funded by $274 million in Goldman Sachs-issued bonds, a $46.7 million government direct loan and $17.6 million in owner equity and anticipated income, the project took five years to complete and involved more new construction than the military had anticipated. More than 1,900 of the 2,300 military houses were replaced with 1,635 town houses and detached homes, while 469 older homes — 14 of them on the National Register of Historic Places — were redone. Renovations are ongoing at 176 units destined for individual service members.

United Communities modeled the design on a golf community it had built in Thorndale, Pa., said Mr. Haydinger, adding that the company had sought to provide upgrades not typically found at “cookie-cutter” military housing. Along the way, the developers found they had enough funds in the budget to build units exceeding the minimum sizes set by the military for the various ranks, in most cases providing houses a full rank size larger.

“We thought, if the income we were going to be getting could afford to build a bigger house, we should build a bigger house,” Mr. Haydinger said.