The Department of Housing and Urban Development set its fiscal 2027 fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment at $2,011 in the Chicago area, $1,762 in the Atlanta area and $1,734 in the Phoenix area. Those figures, effective Oct. 1, 2026, are the base for the payment standards that decide how much a housing voucher pays toward rent. HUD published the notice in the Federal Register on Sept. 1.
The same schedule lists every metro and rural area in the country, so a voucher holder or a landlord can find the number for a home county.
The 2027 numbers for three metro areas
HUD’s FY 2027 schedule gives rents for efficiencies through four bedrooms. In the Chicago-Joliet-Naperville area, which covers Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties, the rents run $1,678 for an efficiency, $1,780 for one bedroom, $2,011 for two, $2,586 for three and $2,954 for four.
The Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell area, which includes Cobb and Clayton counties, lists $1,554, $1,619, $1,762, $2,099 and $2,493 across the same five sizes. The Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler area lists $1,390 for an efficiency, $1,493 for one bedroom and $1,734 for two.
HUD defines the figure as gross rent, meaning rent plus utilities. Its notice says the calculation is “HUD’s best effort to estimate the 40th percentile gross rent paid by recent” movers, and the base data come from five-year Census American Community Survey figures collected from 2020 through 2024.
How a fair market rent becomes a voucher limit
A fair market rent is not the rent a voucher holder pays. HUD’s notice says that in the voucher program the figure is the basis for the payment standard, which sets a family’s maximum monthly subsidy. The local housing authority picks the standard. HUD’s voucher guidebook says an authority can set it anywhere from 90 to 110 percent of the fair market rent without HUD approval.
That choice matters to anyone holding a voucher, because the tenant’s share follows from it. The guidebook says a family generally pays the greater of several amounts, including 30 percent of monthly adjusted income. If the rent is above the payment standard, the family pays that share plus the amount over the standard. At the start of a lease, the share cannot exceed 40 percent of adjusted income.
Stay ahead of government payment news: Miss an enrollment or claim deadline and the money can be gone. Join the Retirement Money Brief and we’ll send you our 2026 Government Check Reality Tracker as a welcome gift.
Get the Brief + the check tracker →
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
When new rents take effect, the guidebook says each housing authority must check that its standards still fall inside the 90-to-110 percent range. If a change is needed, the authority has up to three months, “no later than 3 months following the effective date of the published FMR.” With an Oct. 1 start, that points to early January for the adjustments.
Two-bedroom rents are the primary estimate, according to the notice, and the other bedroom counts are derived from them using bedroom ratios. That is why the schedule can list five sizes for each area while the headline number for a metro is usually the two-bedroom one.
HUD uses the same figures for other programs too. The notice lists HOME and Continuum of Care rent ceilings and public housing flat rents among them. Most readers will meet the number through a voucher or a landlord’s listing.
What changed nationally for 2027
Novogradac reported on Sept. 9 that the weighted average change in the fiscal 2027 rents is 2.0 percent, down from 2.8 percent for fiscal 2026. The simple average across 4,765 areas was 3.4 percent. The 10 most populated areas averaged a change of 0 percent.
The gap between city and country was wide. Novogradac put the weighted rise at 4.13 percent for non-metro areas and 1.66 percent for metro areas. In the Bethel Census Area in Alaska, the two-bedroom rent for 2027 is $1,971.
One method change is behind part of the 2027 numbers. HUD says the Bureau of Labor Statistics has stopped publishing a utility data set it used, so the agency adopted an alternative utility inflation method for fiscal 2027, according to Novogradac’s account of the notice.
HUD’s notice caps decreases at 10 percent a year, so a falling local market does not cut a rent by more than that in a single step. It also adds 8.7 percent to unadjusted three-bedroom estimates and 7.7 percent to four-bedroom estimates for the fixed adjustment.
Areas that kept their 2026 rents
Not every area moved to a new number. The notice made the Oct. 1 start conditional on HUD receiving no valid request to re-examine a local rent, and the list shows a dozen metro and county areas plus two New Hampshire ZIP codes where it did. HUD’s list of valid reevaluation requests names areas where the fiscal 2026 rents stay in effect, among them Milwaukee-Waukesha, Madison, Erie, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara and Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine. Chicago, Atlanta and Phoenix are not on that list, so their 2027 rents applied from Oct. 1.
A voucher holder can find the full tables for a home county on HUD’s FY 2027 rents page, which also carries small-area rents. The open question for each household is what the local housing authority chose for its payment standard, and whether the current rent sits under it.
Is rent the only cost that moved?
When rent sits near a payment standard, a fixed income has little room left, and any other bill that rises comes out of the same check. The tenant pays any amount over the standard.
The turn from the rent figure to the rest of the budget is the point of The Keep-It Starter Bundle. It has nine guides in one download, one per money leak, including how to cut Medicare costs: appeal the income surcharge and use the drug cap. The 95 pages also cover the tax bill and savings that earn nothing.
Get the nine-guide Keep-It bundle to trim the costs that sit beside the rent →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
