The government wants to see if it's worth selling off the agency putting roofs over soldiers and their families.
It's planning a scoping study of Defence Housing Australia.
Should there be no compelling reason for it to remain in public hands, it will join Medibank Private and possibly Australian Hearing, the mint and the Australian Security and Investments Commission registry on the for sale list.
DHA was established in 1987 to better manage Defence's 23,000 housing properties, then regarded as being in poor condition.
It now manages some 18,000 defence homes around Australia and is continuing major developments.
The DHA property portfolio is valued at $10 billion with two-thirds owned by private investors and leased back to DHA.
In 2012-13 it generated total net revenues of $1.041 billion with net profit after tax of $85.1 million.
That was almost $10 million more than projected, paying the government a dividend of $51.1 million.
