Guide
What Is Fair Market Rent? HUD FMRs Explained
How HUD calculates Fair Market Rents, what they include and how housing agencies use them for vouchers.
A Fair Market Rent (FMR) is HUD's estimate of what a modest rental home costs in an area, including utilities. HUD publishes FMRs every year for every metropolitan area and every non-metropolitan county, for units from a studio to four bedrooms. The FY2027 figures took effect on October 1, 2026 and run to September 30, 2027.
What the number measures
An FMR is a gross rent: the contract rent plus the cost of utilities other than telephone, cable or satellite TV and internet. It is set at the 40th percentile of rents paid by recent movers for standard-quality units, which means about 40% of such homes rent for less and 60% for more. It is not an average and it is not a cap on what landlords may charge.
Where the data comes from
HUD starts from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, adjusts it to the right base year with local and national rent indexes, and then trends it forward to the middle of the fiscal year. Since FY2025 HUD has also used private rent data in some areas. Each step is documented in HUD's FMR documentation system.
Who uses Fair Market Rents
- Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8). Housing agencies set payment standards between 90% and 110% of the FMR, and can ask HUD for exceptions.
- HOME and other programs use FMRs to cap rents in assisted units.
- Emergency housing and Continuum of Care grants use them as rent reasonableness benchmarks.
How much they moved this year
Across all counties, weighted by population, the two-bedroom FMR is $1,751 for FY2027, against $1,726 a year earlier. The two-bedroom FMR rose in 2,567 counties and fell in 658. See the FY2027 changes for the details.
Finding your number
Use the search box at the top of any page, or start from your state. Each county page lists all five unit sizes with the last two years for comparison, the income limits for the same area, and the ZIP-code figures where HUD publishes them.