FY2027 Fair Market Rents: Where HUD's Rent Benchmark Rose and Fell

Landlord Atlas analysis. Published: September 1, 2026, the day HUD's FY2027 notice appeared in the Federal Register. Download the 50-state table as CSV; the county-by-county figures behind it are in the rent tables, one page per state.

Summary

The Fair Market Rent (FMR) is the federal government's annual estimate of what a modest rental costs in each local market — the 40th percentile of gross rents for recent movers, published by HUD for every metropolitan area and non-metro county and effective each October 1. FMRs set Section 8 / Housing Choice Voucher payment standards, and a growing number of state and local laws borrow them as thresholds. The FY2027 figures were published September 1, 2026 (91 FR, Sept. 1, 2026) and take effect October 1, 2026. All figures below are two-bedroom FMRs; state averages are population-weighted; year-over-year comparisons match each of HUD's rent areas across the FY2027 and FY2026 files.

• The national benchmark barely moved; the states moved a lot. Weighted across every matched area, the national two-bedroom FMR rose +1.4% ($1,736 → $1,761). Under that flat surface, 37 states rose, 13 fell, and one (Wisconsin) landed exactly flat.
• Illinois rose fastest: +10.8% — followed by Missouri, South Dakota, Vermont, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia (+9.8%, +9.0%, +8.8%, +8.6%, +8.5%). The largest single-market jump among areas above 25,000 population is Hattiesburg, MS MSA at +25.7% ($1,047 → $1,316).
• 13 states declined, led by Arizona, Utah, and Hawaii (-5.3%, -4.5%, -3.0%).
• The 10% decline floor did real work this year: 40 areas in 12 states would have fallen further but were held at 90% of their FY2026 figure by HUD's regulatory floor (24 CFR 888.113; the FY2027 notice, section I). The floored areas concentrate in Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. Public housing agencies in floored areas may request payment standards below the basic range by reference to HUD's unfloored calculations.
• The extremes are familiar: the highest state average is California at $2,632, the lowest is West Virginia at $1,039 — a 2.5× spread between the two benchmarks.

The map

Each tile links to the state's county-by-county rent table. A dot marks states where at least one local area sits at the 10% decline floor. The District of Columbia (+8.5%) has no tile; it appears in the ranked table below.

Every state, ranked (plus DC)

Population-weighted average two-bedroom FMR for FY2027, change versus FY2026, and each state's biggest local move (areas above 25,000 population). Every row links to the state's full table — every FMR area, studio through four-bedroom, with county and town members and a CSV download.

The biggest local moves

Across all states, the largest two-bedroom changes among areas above 25,000 population:

Every one of the ten largest declines lands at −10.0% exactly — that is the 24 CFR 888.113 floor binding, not a coincidence of markets: HUD does not publish an FMR below 90% of the prior year's.

Method

Source: HUD FY2027 and FY2026 county-level Fair Market Rent files, published at huduser.gov — a U.S. government work in the public domain. Figures are HUD's own; the computed values are the population-weighted averages (county populations from HUD's files), year-over-year comparisons matched by HUD area code, and the floor detection (an area counts as floored when its FY2027 figure equals 90% of its FY2026 figure to within a dollar). Local rankings exclude areas at or below 25,000 population so small-base changes don't outrank metro moves; the floor count has no population cutoff. New England areas are defined by town rather than county; U.S. territories are not covered. Related: the maximum legal move-in cost in every state, which prices each state's security-deposit cap at these FY2027 benchmarks, and DC voucher payment standards and the FY2027 Small Area FMRs, which takes the Washington metro's +8.5% down to the ZIP-code level.