About RentData

What We Do

RentData aggregates and normalizes official US housing datasets so renters, buyers, and researchers can compare rental costs, home values, and affordability across the country in one place. Every city page shows Fair Market Rents by bedroom size, the median home value, a rent-vs-buy break-even estimate, and an income-to-rent burden calculation. Each figure keeps the cadence of its source: HUD rent schedules update annually, Zillow home values monthly, and Census income estimates annually.

Our Data Sources

We pull from three primary federal and industry datasets:

• HUD Fair Market Rents (FMR) — The US Department of Housing and Urban Development publishes annual FMR schedules covering over 2,500 metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas. These are the official rent benchmarks used for Section 8 vouchers and reflect the 40th percentile of gross rents for standard units in each market.
• Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) — Zillow's smoothed, seasonally adjusted measure of typical home values provides monthly median home price data at the city and metro level. We use ZHVI to track purchase-market trends and calculate price-to-rent ratios.
• US Census Bureau — American Community Survey (ACS) — We pull median household income and renter population estimates from the ACS 5-year estimates to calculate affordability ratios and contextualize rent burdens across markets.

How We Process the Data

Source datasets are ingested when a new release is available. City records are matched by name and state abbreviation across all three sources to produce a unified view per metro area. All figures are stored and displayed in US dollars without rounding, so the numbers you see reflect exactly what HUD, Zillow, and the Census report.

Derived metrics — like rent burden (annual rent ÷ median income) and break-even years (median home value ÷ annual 2-bedroom rent) — are calculated on the fly from the stored values and are clearly labeled as estimates.

Who We Are

RentData is an independent project with no affiliation with HUD, Zillow, or the US Census Bureau. We are not a real estate brokerage and we do not provide personalized financial advice. All data is provided for informational purposes only. If you find an error or have a data question, reach out via our contact page.