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Use a RentCast-style commercial estimate when you need an address-level rent price and nearby comps. Use HUD Fair Market Rent when you need the official 40th-percentile voucher schedule. For a private underwrite on this site, use the HUD FY2026 50th plus Census ACS 2024 5-year B25031 blend, and keep FMR labeled 40th / voucher. Do not call FMR market rent.
By RentalAnalytics Editorial Team · Updated on 2026-09-29
Screenshots omitted — not fabricated.
_meta was retrieved 2026-08-27. The 50th and ACS samples were retrieved 2026-08-28.Pick the number that matches the decision, not the number that makes the deal look better. A commercial rent estimate answers "what might this address rent for, based on the product's comps?" HUD FMR answers "what 40th-percentile gross rent does HUD publish for this voucher area?" Those are different jobs.
If you are screening a vacant unit for a private lease or a purchase, start with a statistical median you can date, then check comps. On this site that median is the HUD FY2026 50th lift plus ACS B25031, not the FMR line. If you are setting or checking a Housing Choice Voucher payment standard, start with FY2026 FMR and stop calling it market rent.
A broader list of public rent surfaces, without a pairwise method table, is on RentCast alternatives for rent estimates (updated 2026-09-15). This page is only the RentCast-style estimate versus HUD FMR choice.
RentCast's homepage title is "RentCast - Rental Property Rates and Market Trends." The page says you can look up rent prices and comps, view rent rates, rental comps, and rental market data, and get a rent estimate for a house, condo, townhome, apartment, or multi-family property, with up to 20 nearby rental listings.[1] That is a commercial product surface.
The same homepage uses the heading "Accurate Rent Estimates." This article quotes that line. It does not test it, and it does not turn it into a rank against HUD. The page source also carries a site stamp, "Last Published: Sun Aug 09 2026." That is a webpage publish time, not a disclosed model vintage and not a percentile.
Use that kind of estimate when the next step is an address and a short comp set. Do not drop it into a cell labeled "HUD FMR" and do not treat a missing percentile as if it were the 40th. If the commercial figure and the public-data blend disagree, pull more local comps. Do not pick the higher rent because the yield needs it.
HUD's dataset page is titled "HUD Fair Market Rents (40th PERCENTILE RENTS)." It states: "Fair Market Rents, as defined in 24 CFR 888.113 are estimates of 40th percentile gross rents for standard quality units within a metropolitan area or nonmetropolitan county."[2] Gross rent means rent plus utilities. Forty percent of the standard-quality distribution rents for less. That is a program anchor, not the rent a typical vacant unit should ask.
On this site the FY2026 FMR sample _meta records effective 2025-10-01, revised_effective 2026-05-21, and retrieved_on 2026-08-27. The May 21, 2026 revision covered seven areas. This site's sample metros and Fort Wayne were not among them. The same vintage is summarized in HUD FY2026 FMR: what changed.
The methodology page prints the official metro-wide FY2026 area 40th for Fort Wayne as $892 / $916 / $1,113 / $1,381 / $1,512 for 0 through 4 bedrooms.[3] Those dollars are voucher-schedule gross rents. They are not a market-rent claim and not a RentCast comp. ZIP-level Small Area FMR in the Fort Wayne area can differ from that metro-wide row. Read the file notes in Reading HUD Fair Market Rents before you treat one county number as every ZIP.
The hero "estimated market rent" is a statistical median from public files, not MLS asking rent and not a listing scrape. Methodology, last updated 2026-08-28, builds it as ZIP FMR or Small Area FMR times (area 50th divided by area 40th) for that bedroom, then ages the result from 2025-10-01.[3] HUD publishes the 50th-percentile series separately and states that those figures are not Fair Market Rents. This page does not relabel the 50th file as FMR.
Census ACS 2024 5-year table B25031 is the second anchor: median gross rent by bedrooms at the ZCTA, shown with the Census margin of error and aged from mid-2024. It is an occupied-unit median, not asking rent, and it is not the hero. The ACS sample _meta lists release "ACS 2024 5-year," as_of 2024-07-01, and retrieved_on 2026-08-28. The HUD 50th sample _meta lists the same retrieved date, with effective 2025-10-01. ZIPs that are not ZCTAs do not get an invented ACS row.
The aging factor published on the methodology page is BLS CPI Shelter at 3.2% year over year as of July 2026 (BLS release 2026-08-12). Property-type multipliers on that same page are single-family +8%, townhouse +5%, condo +2%, and duplex unit −3%. Those are file adjustments on this site, not a finding about RentCast. The rent estimator keeps the FMR line beside the blend and labels it 40th / voucher. Full path: how to estimate rent and methodology.
The rows below are a method comparison dated 2026-09-29. They are not a traffic ranking and not an accuracy test.
| Number | Percentile | Use case | Freshness this page can date |
|---|---|---|---|
| RentCast-style commercial estimate | Not stated as a HUD 40th or 50th on the homepage | Address rent price and nearby comps | Product page. HTML stamp Last Published August 9, 2026 is a site publish time, not a model vintage |
| HUD Fair Market Rent | 40th percentile gross rent | Voucher payment standards and related HUD program ceilings | FY2026 effective 2025-10-01. This site retrieved the FMR sample 2026-08-27. Seven-area revision effective 2026-05-21 |
| RentalAnalytics market blend | HUD FY2026 50th (not FMR), with ACS 2024 5-year B25031 as a second median anchor | Statistical median for investment underwriting | Methodology last updated 2026-08-28. 50th and ACS samples retrieved 2026-08-28. HUD leg aged from 2025-10-01; ACS aged from mid-2024 |
Put FY2026 FMR in the memo when the sentence is about a voucher ceiling. Put the market blend, or the rent roll if the unit is leased, in the rent cell of a private underwrite. Then run that rent through a live calculator. The cap rate calculator and the cash flow analyzer take rent as an input. They do not convert a 40th-percentile voucher rent into a median.
Confirm either public figure with local comps before a lease or an offer. A dated file is not a tenant's bid. If the estimator flags the ZIP as extrapolated, show a range. Do not fill the gap with an unlabeled FMR and call the output market rent.
No. HUD labels Fair Market Rents as 40th percentile gross rents for voucher and program use. On this site, FMR stays the 40th / voucher number. Estimated market rent is a separate HUD FY2026 50th-percentile plus Census ACS 2024 5-year B25031 blend.
Use a RentCast-style commercial estimate when you need an address-level rent price and nearby rental comps. RentCast's homepage offers rent rates, comps, and market data. That is not the HUD 40th-percentile voucher schedule, and this page does not score its accuracy.
The market blend is HUD FY2026 50th-percentile rents, which HUD states are not Fair Market Rents, scaled onto ZIP FMR or Small Area FMR, plus Census ACS 2024 5-year B25031 as a second occupied-unit anchor. Methodology was last updated 2026-08-28.
Use FY2026 FMR for a voucher or program ceiling. For a private underwrite, put the market blend or in-place rent into the cap rate calculator or cash flow analyzer. FMR is a 40th-percentile gross rent, so treating it as market rent pulls the yield off the median concept.
No. Screenshots omitted. Not fabricated. The comparison uses RentCast's public homepage, the HUD USER Fair Market Rents dataset page, and this site's published methodology and FY2026 data vintage.
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