HUD Fair Market Rents Scraper

Extract HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) Fair Market Rent (FMR) data for all U.S. counties and metro areas across multiple fiscal years — no API key required.

What Is This?

Fair Market Rents are published annually by HUD and represent the 40th percentile of gross rents for standard-quality units in a given area. They are used to determine payment standards for the Housing Choice Voucher program and other federal housing assistance.

What Data Does It Return?

Each record contains:

Field	Description
area_name	HUD FMR area name (e.g., "San Francisco, CA MSA")
county_name	County name
state_name	Full state name
state_code	Two-letter state abbreviation
fips_code	FIPS geographic code
area_code	HUD internal area code
year	Fiscal year
metro	true = metropolitan area, false = non-metro county
efficiency_fmr	Studio/efficiency FMR in USD
onebr_fmr	1-bedroom FMR in USD
twobr_fmr	2-bedroom FMR in USD
threebr_fmr	3-bedroom FMR in USD
fourbr_fmr	4-bedroom FMR in USD
fmr_type	Always "Fair Market Rent"
scrapedAt	ISO 8601 timestamp

Modes

searchByState (default)

Return all FMR records for a specific US state.

Example input:

{
  "mode": "searchByState",
  "state": "California",
  "year": "2024",
  "maxItems": 100
}

searchByMetroArea

Search metro areas by keyword in the area name.

Example input:

{
  "mode": "searchByMetroArea",
  "metroAreaName": "Los Angeles",
  "year": "2024"
}

allMetroAreas

Return all metropolitan area FMR records nationwide (or for a specific state).

Example input:

{
  "mode": "allMetroAreas",
  "year": "2024",
  "maxItems": 500
}

byCounty

Return non-metropolitan county-level FMR records, optionally filtered by state.

Example input:

{
  "mode": "byCounty",
  "state": "Texas",
  "year": "2024"
}

Input Options

Parameter	Type	Description
mode	Select	searchByState, searchByMetroArea, allMetroAreas, byCounty
state	Select	US state name (e.g., "California")
year	Select	Fiscal year: 2018–2026
metroAreaName	Text	Keyword to search metro area names
maxItems	Integer	Max records to return (1–2000, default 100)

Years Available

FY 2018 through FY 2026 data is available. Each year's data covers approximately 4,700–4,800 geographic areas.

Data Source

Data is sourced from the official HUD User Portal:
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr.html

No API key or registration is required.

Use Cases

• Housing affordability research
• Section 8 / Housing Choice Voucher analysis
• Real estate market analysis
• Policy research and government reporting
• Rent comparison across cities and states

FAQs

Q: Is an API key required?
A: No. The scraper downloads publicly available XLSX files from the HUD portal.

Q: How current is the data?
A: FY 2026 data is the most current. HUD typically publishes new fiscal year data in the fall.

Q: What does "efficiency FMR" mean?
A: It's the Fair Market Rent for a studio/0-bedroom unit.

Q: How many records can I get?
A: Each state has approximately 50–200 FMR areas. Nationwide, there are ~4,700 records per year.

Q: Are territories included?
A: Yes — Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa are included in the data.