HUD FMR Texas: fair market rent data for Texas, FY2026

Texas in the FY2026 FMR files

Texas is the second-largest state in the HUD FMR FY2026 pack by row count. Filtering the ZIP file on state = TX matches 3,247 of the 51,895 rows, about 6 percent of the file. The county file adds 254 Texas county rows, and the 52-row state summary carries one Texas row. Together the three files give you the state at three levels: ZIP, county, and one-line summary.

Inside the ZIP file, the 3,247 Texas rows break down into 215 distinct HUD areas. 47 of them are metro FMR areas, where HUD publishes ZIP-level Small Area FMRs, and the other 168 are nonmetro counties that carry a county-level value. That split shows up in the values. Metro ZIPs vary within a metro, and nonmetro ZIPs repeat their county number.

Texas metros, examples from the FY2026 CSV

The biggest metros dominate the row count. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and Fort Worth together account for 983 of the 3,247 Texas rows, and each one spans a wide 2BR range because ZIP-level values replace the old metro-wide single number. Every figure below comes straight from fmr-by-zip-2026.csv:

A few reads fall out of the table. Midland has the highest floor in the state: its cheapest ZIP sits at a 2BR of 1,690, above the state-wide median of 1,190, and its 15 ZIPs stay inside a 270-dollar band. McAllen runs the cheapest of the border metros, with no ZIP above 1,320. Dallas and Fort Worth price apart even though they share a metroplex, because HUD splits them into two FMR areas. The metro-level geography behind this table is covered in HUD metro area list, which ranks all 649 FY2026 areas by ZIP count. For a second big-state pull, HUD FMR for Florida runs the same numbers for 1,555 ZIP rows, where the state median of 1,800 sits 650 dollars above the national number. To see what these rents do to a budget, the rent affordability guide runs the 30% rule against the FMR, five metros including Houston and Abilene against the US median household income.

Query the file for Texas

Filtering on the state column is the fastest way in. In a spreadsheet, filter the state column for TX. For scripts and agents, the dataset-mcp server takes a where clause, setup on the For agents page. This query runs against the full ZIP file:

query_dataset(
  "hud-fmr-2026",
  {
    "where": [{ "column": "state", "op": "=", "value": "TX" }],
    "columns": ["zip", "area_name", "fmr_2br"],
    "limit": 5
  }
)

Output from a September 2026 test run of server v1.1.0, matching 3,247 Texas ZIP rows:

The cold call, including the one-time file download, took 367ms and the next page came back in 265ms from cache. Results start in Abilene because rows return in file order, not alphabetical order. A filter on both state and metro narrows it to one metro, for example Houston, and the CSV vs API decision guide covers when querying beats downloading the whole file.

Texas at a glance, from the state summary row

The state summary file condenses Texas to one row. In FY2026 the state-wide 2BR median across Texas ZIPs is 1,190, the cheapest ZIP values out at 970, and the priciest ZIP reaches 2,900. The summary also names the extremes at the county level: Rockwall County holds the highest 2BR in the state at 1,931, and Bailey County the lowest at 973. The full 52-row file, Texas included, is available as a free CSV download, so you can put Texas next to the other 51 states without paying anything.

For the row-by-row work behind these numbers, HUD FMR by ZIP code walks one ZIP lookup end to end and HUD FMR by county explains the county rollup, including why some counties report both a median and a max.

HUD FMR Texas questions

How many Texas rows are in the HUD FMR data?

The FY2026 ZIP file holds 3,247 Texas rows out of 51,895 total, one row per Texas ZIP code. The county file adds 254 Texas county rows, and the 52-row state summary carries one Texas row with the state-wide median, the highest county, and the lowest county.

Why do Dallas and Fort Worth carry different FMRs if they are one metroplex?

HUD splits the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex into separate HUD Metro FMR Areas. In FY2026 the Dallas area covers 260 Texas ZIPs with 2BR FMRs from 1,030 to 2,900, while Fort Worth-Arlington covers 126 ZIPs with 2BR values from 970 to 2,800. Each ZIP takes the FMR of the HUD area it belongs to, so the two sides of the metroplex are priced apart in the file.

What is the cheapest and most expensive 2BR FMR in Texas for FY2026?

Texas ZIP-level 2BR FMRs run from 970 dollars at the low end to 2,900 at the high end. The state summary names Rockwall County as the highest-rent county at a 2BR of 1,931 and Bailey County as the lowest at 973. The state-wide median across the 3,247 Texas ZIP rows is 1,190.

Get the full dataset

The free 22-row sample shows the schema. The full pack carries all 3,247 Texas ZIP rows inside the 51,895-row ZIP file, the county file (3,229 rows), the 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.