HUD FMR by county: fair market rent lookup for FY2026

What FMR by county means

Fair Market Rent is HUD's estimate of the 40th percentile gross rent, shelter rent plus utilities, for standard-quality units in a market. HUD has always published FMRs on an area basis, and the county sits at the center of that geography: every HUD Fair Market Rent Area is either a metro area or a county, and the county-level file reports the FMRs of the areas inside each county. When someone searches for fair market rent by county, that file is the direct answer. The percentile math and the payment-standard rules behind it live in HUD fair market rent data, explained.

For FY2026, the county table covers 3,229 counties and county equivalents across 56 state and territory codes. Every row carries median and max FMR values for five bedroom sizes, 0BR through 4BR, in monthly dollars rounded exactly as HUD published them.

Inside the FY2026 county file

The county table in the HUD FMR FY2026 pack is fmr-by-county-2026.csv, 3,229 rows, one per county, built from HUD's FY26 county FMR file. Fifteen columns:

• state, 2-letter code, and state_name, the full name
• county, the county name from HUD's file, suffix included, so rows read "Harris County", "Harrisonburg city", "Aleutians East Borough"
• metro, metro if the county contains a metro FMR area, else nonmetro
• fmr_0br_median and fmr_0br_max through fmr_4br_median and fmr_4br_max, ten columns, monthly USD per bedroom size
• area_rows, the number of HUD area rows the rollup aggregated. 1 means the county maps to a single HUD area and the published FMR carries over directly

The median and max pair exists because counties and HUD areas do not line up one-to-one everywhere. Where they do, 3,162 of the 3,229 rows, median equals max and both are the published county FMR. The remaining 67 counties span several HUD areas, and the rollup summarizes them instead of picking one.

Look up one county, example: Harris County, TX

Filter on county and state together. The county name alone is ambiguous: rows named Harris County exist in Georgia and Texas, Washington County appears 30 times, Jefferson County 25 times. In a spreadsheet, filter the county and state columns. For scripts and agents, the dataset-mcp server takes a where clause with both conditions, setup on the For agents page. This query runs against the full county file:

query_dataset(
  "hud-fmr-2026",
  {
    "file": "hud-fmr-by-county-2026.csv",
    "where": [
      { "column": "county", "op": "=", "value": "Harris County" },
      { "column": "state", "op": "=", "value": "TX" }
    ],
    "columns": ["state", "county", "metro", "fmr_0br_median", "fmr_1br_median", "fmr_2br_median", "fmr_2br_max", "fmr_3br_median", "fmr_4br_median", "area_rows"]
  }
)

Output, matching the Harris County row in the county file:

Harris County, TX carries a 2BR FMR of 1,573 with area_rows at 1, so the value is the published FMR for the single HUD area covering the county. For contrast, Los Angeles County, CA shows a 2BR of 2,903 and Miami-Dade County, FL sits at 2,436. Whether one lookup at a time beats downloading the whole file is the tradeoff in FMR lookup: one at a time, or all 51,895 ZIP rows.

Counties that roll up more than one HUD area

The 67 multi-area counties concentrate in New England, where HUD sets FMRs for smaller areas inside a county. Bristol County, MA aggregates 20 area rows with a 2BR median of 1,729 and a max of 2,550, an 821-dollar spread inside one county. Worcester County, MA rolls up 60 rows with a median of 2,056 and a max of 2,166. When you screen a market with the county file, read area_rows first: at 1 the county has one number, above 1 the median and max are the bounds of what HUD publishes inside that county.

The county file answers "what does HUD publish for this county". The ZIP-level picture, where ZIPs in the same metro carry their own Small Area FMRs, is the subject of HUD FMR by ZIP code, and the geography split is laid out in SAFMR vs FMR, explained.

FMR by county questions

How many counties are in the HUD FMR data?

The FY2026 county file covers 3,229 counties and county equivalents across 56 state and territory codes, one row per county. Each row carries median and max FMR values for five bedroom sizes (0BR through 4BR) in monthly dollars.

Why does the county file have both a median and a max column?

For 3,162 counties, median and max are the same number because the county maps to a single HUD area, so area_rows equals 1. The other 67 counties span more than one HUD area, and the rollup reports the median and the max of those area FMRs. Bristol County, MA, for example, aggregates 20 area rows with a 2BR median of 1,729 and a max of 2,550.

What is the difference between FMR by county and FMR by ZIP?

The county file follows HUD's traditional geography: one row per county with the FMRs of the HUD areas inside it. The ZIP file follows HUD's Small Area FMR publication: 51,895 rows, one per ZIP, where designated metros get ZIP-level values. If you need one number for a whole county, use the county file. If you need the ZIP-level variation inside a metro, use the ZIP file.

Get the full dataset

The free 22-row sample shows the schema. The full pack carries all 3,229 county rows, the ZIP-level file (51,895 rows), state summary (52 rows), the data dictionary, and source checksums.

Checkout and download run through Getly. Source: US Department of Housing and Urban Development, FY2026 Fair Market Rent release, huduser.gov. US government data, public domain.