Fair Market Rent is a 40th-percentile area rent HUD publishes for voucher payment standards. It is not a guarantee you will collect it on an ADU. Look it up. Type it. We will not invent your area’s figure.
FY 2026 FMRyou look up at HUD UserFY 2026 Fair Market Rents took effect 1 October 2025. HUD later revised some areas. Small Area FMRs are ZIP-level inside some metros. Lookup: huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr.html. Retrieved 26 August 2026.
Look up the FY 2026 Fair Market Rent for your metro (or Small Area FMR by ZIP where it applies) at HUD User, then type the monthly figure, a vacancy percent and any utilities you will pay.
On a worked $1,800 per month with 8% vacancy and $0 owner utilities, gross is $21,600 and after vacancy $19,872. Bedroom count on the form is a label. FMR is not a signed lease. HyreADU does not let property.
Paste the FMR, then vacancy
Look it up at HUD User. We do not store the number. Nothing is emailed.
—Gross annual
—After vacancy
—After owner-paid utilities
—What FMR is
What this assumed—
FMR is a 40th-percentile area rent, not a signed lease. No FMR table is shipped. HyreADU does not let property.
Fair Market Rent is not the rent anybody is paying
Fair Market Rent is a 40th-percentile gross rent, including utilities, computed so a housing authority can set a voucher payment standard. Almost every mistake people make with this number follows from not knowing that sentence.
HUD’s own description. FMR is a 40th-percentile policy construct (gross rent including utilities) used for Housing Choice Vouchers. It is not observed ADU asking rent and not ACS median gross rent.
It is published by HUD Office of Policy Development and Research through the HUD Fair Market Rent Documentation System. The FY2026 series took effect 2025-10-01; we retrieved the figures on this page on 2026-09-05.
Take the three parts of that in turn, because each one moves your arithmetic in a different direction. First, it is a 40th percentile.
By construction that sits below the middle of the market: six units in ten in the area rent for more.
It is not an average, it is not a median, and it is not a typical asking price.
It was chosen low on purpose, because its job is to set what a public program will pay, not to describe what a landlord can get.
Second, it is a gross rent. The figure already has an allowance for essential utilities inside it.
So the comparable number for a unit let with the tenant paying their own power, water and gas is lower than the published FMR, not higher — you would have to strip the utility component out before the two numbers describe the same deal.
Most people do the opposite: they take FMR as the base rent and then add nothing, or worse, mentally add the utilities on top.
Third, it is a policy construct. It exists to administer the Housing Choice Voucher program.
It is not a survey of accessory dwelling units, and there is no reason a detached studio in a back garden should price like the 40th-percentile apartment in a metropolitan area of several million people. It may be higher.
It may be lower. FMR cannot tell you which, and neither can we.
Which gives the two errors this page exists to prevent. Used as an asking rent, FMR overstates the return, because a below-median gross figure is being treated as a collectible net one.
Used as a conservative floor, it understates the return, because a floor you have not checked against your own street is a guess wearing a federal badge.
Both errors are confident, both are invisible in the spreadsheet, and they point in opposite directions — so two people can misuse the same number and reach opposite conclusions about the same building.
The honest use. Treat FMR as one labeled benchmark beside at least one other observation — actual listings for comparable units near you, or a letting agent’s written opinion.
Then write in your own spreadsheet which of the two you used.
A lender, a partner or a future version of yourself will ask, and "I think it was the HUD number" is not an answer that survives the question.
Four California metros, FY2026, by bedroom count
Real published figures, so you can see the shape of the series before you look up your own. The last column is the one that matters: what HUD attaches to that particular row.
The bedroom column you copy from is not a detail. In Los Angeles the efficiency figure is $2,079 and the three-bedroom is $3,681 — a difference of $1,602 a month, which is HyreADU subtraction on HUD’s two published figures. Most ADUs are studios or one-bedrooms; most people reading a table reach for a middle column.HUD Office of Policy Development and Research, HUD Fair Market Rent Documentation System. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
HUD Metro FMR Area
Efficiency
1 BR
2 BR
3 BR
What HUD notes about this row
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA HUD Metro FMR Area Los Angeles County
$2,079
$2,328
$2,903
$3,681
Based on a local rent survey conducted in August 2025; revised FMRs effective 21 May 2026 (91 FR).
San Francisco, CA HUD Metro FMR Area San Francisco County; San Mateo County
$2,485
$2,977
$3,604
$4,604
No area-specific note attached to this row in the retrieved documentation.
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA HUD Metro FMR Area Santa Clara County
$2,621
$2,982
$3,483
$4,602
Housing Choice Voucher programs in this metro use Small Area FMRs by ZIP. Figures here are the metro-level FMRs HUD publishes for other programs.
Sacramento--Roseville--Arden-Arcade, CA HUD Metro FMR Area El Dorado, Placer and Sacramento Counties
$1,748
$1,832
$2,255
$3,002
Housing Choice Voucher programs in this metro use Small Area FMRs by ZIP. Figures here are the metro-level FMRs HUD publishes for other programs.
HUD Office of Policy Development and Research, HUD Fair Market Rent Documentation System, FY2026, effective 2025-10-01. Retrieved 2026-09-05. These four are printed as an illustration of the series, not as a lookup table — if your area is not one of them, the figure you need is at HUD, not here.
Why a metro figure can be badly wrong for your street
Two of the four rows above carry the same HUD note, and it is the reason this calculator refuses to ship a default.
Between the highest and lowest of these four two-bedroom figures there is $1,228 a month of difference — HyreADU subtraction on HUD’s published rows. Within a metro, the Small Area figures spread further still, which is exactly the point below.HUD Office of Policy Development and Research, HUD Fair Market Rent Documentation System. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
The note HUD attaches. On both the San José and the Sacramento rows: "Housing Choice Voucher programs in this metro use Small Area FMRs by ZIP. Figures here are the metro-level FMRs HUD publishes for other programs." A Small Area FMR is computed for a ZIP code rather than for the whole metropolitan area.
Where it applies, the metro figure is an average across neighborhoods that rent nothing like each other.
Think about what that averaging does. A metro-level figure for a county containing both its most expensive and its cheapest housing has to land somewhere in between.
For a reader in the expensive part it is too low; for a reader in the cheap part it is too high.
The metro number is not wrong — it is correctly computed for a geography that is not your garden.
HUD built the Small Area series precisely because the metro one was being applied at a scale it does not describe.
So the shortcut a calculator could take here is the worst thing it could do. We could hold a table, ask for your state, and print a confident dollar figure.
It would be a fake localiser: a number that looks like it knows about your address, produced by something that knows only your state.
It would be stale within a year, wrong wherever an area is revised mid-year, and most wrong in exactly the metros where Small Area figures exist, because those are the metros where the neighborhood spread is widest.
What we do instead. The field starts at zero and stays there until you paste something in. That is deliberate friction.
The five minutes it costs you to open HUD’s documentation system and find your own area is the cheapest research on the whole project, and it is the only step that makes the arithmetic afterwards mean anything.
One more reason to look it up rather than remember it. The Los Angeles row carries a different note: "Based on a local rent survey conducted in August 2025; revised FMRs effective 21 May 2026 (91 FR)." Areas get resurveyed and revised inside a fiscal year.
A figure you wrote down in a spreadsheet last spring may not be the figure HUD publishes for the same area today, and nothing in your spreadsheet will tell you that it changed.
The utility question, worked through properly
Utilities are where the double-count happens, and it happens in both directions depending on who pays what.
If the tenant pays their own utilities
Then the rent you can ask is a net rent, and FMR is a gross one. The two are not the same quantity. Pasting the gross figure into the monthly field and leaving owner-paid utilities at zero produces an annual income that silently includes a utility allowance nobody is going to pay you.
The correction is not arithmetic we can do for you, because the size of the utility component varies by area and by which utilities the tenant is responsible for.
What we can say is the direction: your comparable figure is below the published FMR, and if you want the calculator to be conservative you should type in something below it rather than exactly it.
If you pay the utilities
Then the gross figure is closer to the right comparison — but the owner-paid utilities field still has to carry your actual annual cost, because the calculator subtracts what you type, not what HUD assumed. Two different numbers are involved: HUD’s allowance inside the FMR, and your bill. They will not match.
The practical version: get twelve months of actual meter data for the main house before you assume what the ADU will use, and remember that a new, well-insulated small unit and a large older house are not comparable consumers.
Where the ADU shares a meter with the house, you are not estimating a bill, you are estimating a share of one — which is a different and harder problem, and one worth solving before the tenancy rather than during it.
Where the calculator draws the line
The tool multiplies by twelve, applies your vacancy percentage, and subtracts the owner-paid utilities you typed. That is the whole model. It does not know your utility split, your area’s allowance schedule, or your local practice on who pays for what.
It is a small model on purpose. A larger one would need assumptions we cannot source, and every one of those assumptions would be invisible by the time you read the answer.
The output of a short honest calculation you can check on paper is worth more than the output of a long one you cannot.
About half of these units were never let at market at all
Before you compute a return on rent, it is worth knowing what surveyed California ADU owners actually did with their units.
Each square is a tenth of a per cent of the surveyed sample. This is a survey of owners who responded, not a census of California ADUs, and it should be read as the shape of a distribution rather than as an exact rate.Chapple, Ganetsos and Lopez, Implementing the Backyard Revolution: Perspectives of California's ADU Owners, UC Berkeley Center for Community Innovation, 22 April 2021
The figures. In the owner survey published as Chapple, Ganetsos and Lopez, Implementing the Backyard Revolution: Perspectives of California's ADU Owners, UC Berkeley Center for Community Innovation, 22 April 2021, 51% of respondents reported the unit generating rental income and 16% reported housing a relative at no cost. 8% reported short-term letting.
The reported median rent was $2,000 statewide, $2,200 in the Bay Area and $1,925 on the Central Coast.
The group housing a relative at no cost did not build a bad investment. They built a different thing, and a rent-based return calculation is the wrong instrument for judging it.
If the unit is for a parent, a returning adult child or a live-in carer, the honest financial question is what the alternative arrangement would have cost — a care setting, a second household, a move — and that is a number only your family has.
This calculator will happily produce a return of zero for that project, and the zero will be arithmetically correct and completely uninformative.
Which is why the sixth-of-a-sample figure belongs on a rent page. If roughly one owner in six is in that group, then a meaningful minority of the people reading this should stop at the end of this section.
Not because the numbers are bad, but because the question is not "what will it let for". Working the rent arithmetic anyway, and then feeling obliged to justify the project against it, is how a good decision gets talked out of itself by a spreadsheet.
And the survey is old enough to matter. It was published in 2021 and describes units built before that. Rents have moved since, and so has the law.
We publish the shares because the composition finding — that a large fraction of ADUs are not commercial rentals — is the kind of structural fact that changes slowly.
We do not index the dollar figures forward, and you should not treat them as current asking rents.
If yours is a by-right unit, short-term letting is off the table
The 30-day minimum term removes an entire revenue model from the arithmetic, and it does so by statute rather than by local preference.
The provision. Under Gov. Code § 66323(a), which is the by-right ministerial route for the standard detached and conversion units: "A local agency shall require that a rental of the accessory dwelling unit created pursuant to this section be for a term longer than 30 days." That is a requirement the local agency must impose, not one it may choose to.
What that does to a rent estimate. The short-term letting share in the owner survey was 8%, and for a unit created under that section it is not available.
Any nightly-rate arithmetic — occupancy percentages, cleaning fees, seasonal pricing — describes a business you may not run in that unit. Monthly rent is the model, and it is the only model this page supports.
Read the scope carefully rather than generalising it. The sentence is attached to units created pursuant to that section.
It is not a statewide ban on short-term letting, and it is not advice about a unit created some other way.
Separately, cities regulate short-term rentals under their own ordinances, and those rules are local, change often, and are not something this site holds.
The point here is narrower and more useful: if the reason your unit was approved quickly and without a hearing is the by-right route, then the condition attached to that route applies to you.
Ask the question in the right order. Find out which statutory route your application will use before you build a revenue model on nightly rates, not after.
The planning counter can tell you which section they will process it under, that conversation is free, and it is a great deal cheaper than discovering the constraint once the unit is finished and the model has been shown to a lender.
How to look yours up, in the order that avoids the common errors
Five steps. The first is the one people skip, and skipping it is why the wrong column gets copied.
1
Decide which bedroom column describes your unit
A studio is HUD’s efficiency column, not the one-bedroom column. Most ADUs are efficiencies or one-bedrooms. The difference in Los Angeles between those two FY2026 figures is $249 a month — HyreADU subtraction on the two published rows — which over a year is not a rounding error.
2
Find the area, not the city
FMR is published for HUD Metro FMR Areas and non-metropolitan counties, and the area name is often not your city’s name. The Sacramento area, for example, is published as covering El Dorado, Placer and Sacramento Counties. Read the counties listed, not the headline.
3
Check whether your metro uses Small Area FMRs
If it does, the ZIP-level figure is the one that describes your neighborhood and the metro figure is an average over places that are not it. Two of the four areas on this page carry that note.
4
Check the fiscal year and whether the area was revised
The FY2026 series took effect 2025-10-01. Areas can be resurveyed and revised inside a year — the Los Angeles row on this page carries exactly that note. Use the current published figure, not the one in your notes.
5
Get a second observation before you trust the first
Actual listings for comparable units near you, or a written opinion from someone who lets property locally. If the two numbers are close, you have a usable range. If they are far apart, that gap is information, and it is worth understanding before it is worth averaging away.
Five rent numbers that get used interchangeably and should not be
Each of these is a real quantity. They measure different things, and the last column is what goes wrong when one is substituted for another.
The number
What it actually measures
What substituting it for the others does to your answer
Fair Market Rent
FMR is a 40th-percentile policy construct (gross rent including utilities) used for Housing Choice Vouchers. It is not observed ADU asking rent and not ACS median gross rent.
Used as asking rent it overstates return, because a below-median gross figure is treated as a collectible net one. Used as a floor it understates return. It is a benchmark and has to be labeled as one wherever it appears in your own arithmetic.
Small Area FMR
The same construct computed for a ZIP code rather than a whole metropolitan area, used for the voucher program in designated metros.
Where it exists and you used the metro figure instead, you have applied an average across neighborhoods to a single address. In a metro with a wide internal spread that error can be larger than every other assumption in the model put together.
Asking rent on a listing
What a landlord is currently advertising, before negotiation, concessions or time on market.
It is a market observation and a good second check, but it is the price nobody has yet agreed to. A listing that has been up for three months is evidence about the market, and it is not evidence in the direction the number suggests.
Achieved rent on a signed lease
What a tenant actually agreed to pay, for a specific unit, on a specific date.
The best evidence there is, and the hardest to get. If you can obtain two or three of these for genuinely comparable units, they outrank every published series on this page. HyreADU holds none of them.
The 2021 survey medians ($2,000 statewide)
What surveyed California ADU owners reported collecting, at the time of the survey, on units built before it.
Treated as a current figure it is simply out of date, and we do not index it forward. Treated as a composition finding — that about half these units are let at all — it is the most useful thing on the page.
We hold no dataset of ADU bids, quotes or contracts. Every dollar figure on this site is a named third party’s published figure, arithmetic we performed on one and have labeled as ours, or a number you typed in.
What to ask, and what a usable rent assumption looks like
The first four cost nothing but time. The last two are the ones people wish they had asked.
Which statutory route will my application be processed under?
Ask the planning counter directly. If the answer is the by-right section, then Gov. Code § 66323(a) requires a tenancy longer than 30 days and any nightly-rate model is off the table before you build it.
Does my metro publish Small Area FMRs, and what is my ZIP’s figure?
If it does, that is your number and the metro figure is not. This single check is the difference between a localised assumption and a metropolitan average applied to one garden.
Who pays which utilities, and is the ADU separately metered?
This decides whether the FMR gross figure is roughly comparable or materially above your collectible rent, and it decides what goes in the owner-paid utilities field. A shared meter turns a rent question into an apportionment question — settle it before the tenancy, in writing.
What are two or three genuinely comparable units actually letting for?
Same size, same bedroom count, same kind of access and parking, same neighborhood. Two real observations beat one published series, and the exercise of trying to find comparables tells you something in itself: if there are none, the market for your unit is thinner than the FMR implies.
What vacancy assumption is defensible here, and why?
The 8 per cent on the form is a placeholder we labeled as one, not a market study.
A new unit in a thin market can do far worse; a unit in a tight one can do better.
Whatever you type, write down the reason next to it, because a vacancy percentage with no justification is the assumption that quietly carries the whole result.
Do not present FMR to a lender as an expected rent
It is a 40th-percentile gross policy figure and it will be recognized as one. Say which number you used and where it came from. Presenting a benchmark as an achieved rent is the kind of error that costs credibility on everything else in the file.
Do not build the project on the rent alone
Across 2018-2025, 41% of ADU permit units issued between 2018 and 2023 have no matching completion in the state’s own file — a HyreADU calculation on that dataset. What stops projects is the money and the utility connection, not the rent forecast. A rent number that works does not mean a project that finishes.
What this tool cannot do
Specific blind spots, not a disclaimer. Each of these is something a reader could reasonably expect and will not get.
It cannot tell you what your unit will let for
It multiplies a number you typed by twelve and applies a percentage you typed. Every judgment in the answer is yours. If the monthly figure is wrong, the annual figure is wrong by twelve times as much, and nothing on the page will flag it.
That is not modesty. HyreADU does not let property, holds no dataset of leases or listings, and has no way of observing your street.
It ships no FMR table, by design
Not for your state, not for your metro, not as a "typical" default. A shipped table would be stale within a fiscal year, wrong wherever an area was revised mid-year, and most wrong in the metros where Small Area figures exist — which are exactly the metros where people most need the right number.
The cost of that decision is five minutes of your time. The cost of the alternative is a confident number for somewhere that is not where you live.
It does not model tax, depreciation, management or turnover
No income tax, no depreciation schedule, no letting agent fee, no maintenance reserve, no turnover cost between tenancies, no rent growth. The output is a gross-to-after-vacancy figure and it is not net income in any accounting sense.
Adding those would require assumptions we cannot source for your situation, and false precision in a rent model is worse than visible simplicity. Take the number to someone who prepares tax.
It knows nothing about whether you may let the unit at all
Tenancy rules, rent stabilisation where it applies, short-term rental ordinances, and any condition attached to your approval are local and are not held on this site. The one statutory constraint we do carry is the Gov. Code § 66323(a) requirement for terms longer than 30 days on by-right units.
A rent figure for a letting you are not permitted to do is not a conservative estimate. It is a wrong one.
It cannot separate the gross from the net for you
FMR includes a utility allowance. Stripping that out to get a comparable net rent needs the area’s utility schedule and a view on which utilities your tenant will pay. We tell you the direction of the correction and decline to invent its size.
It has nothing to say about the sixth of owners who let to nobody
16% of surveyed owners reported housing a relative at no cost. For that project the entire output of this page is zero, and the zero is not a finding about whether the project was worth doing.
The vocabulary of a rent figure
Fair Market Rent (FMR)
FMR is a 40th-percentile policy construct (gross rent including utilities) used for Housing Choice Vouchers. It is not observed ADU asking rent and not ACS median gross rent.
Gross rent
Rent including an allowance for essential utilities. FMR is a gross figure. If your tenant pays their own utilities, the comparable number for your unit is below the published FMR, not above it.
40th percentile
The value below which four in ten observations fall. It sits below the median by construction. HUD chose it for the voucher program; nobody chose it as a description of what a new ADU can ask.
HUD Metro FMR Area
The geography FMR is published for. It is often not a city and often not one county — the Sacramento area, for example, covers El Dorado, Placer and Sacramento Counties. Read the counties, not the name.
Small Area FMR
FMR computed for a ZIP code rather than a metropolitan area, used for the voucher program in designated metros. Where it applies, the metro figure is an average across neighborhoods that do not rent alike.
Efficiency
HUD’s zero-bedroom column — a studio. The column most ADUs belong in, and the column people most often skip past on the way to a middle row.
Vacancy
The share of the year the unit earns nothing. The 8 per cent on the form is a labeled placeholder, not a measurement of your market.
Achieved rent
What a tenant actually signed for. The strongest evidence available and the hardest to obtain. It outranks every published series on this page, and HyreADU holds none of it.
Term longer than 30 days
The tenancy length a local agency must require for a unit created under Gov. Code § 66323(a). It removes nightly letting from the arithmetic for those units.
When the honest answer is that the rent does not justify it
A calculator that can only produce encouraging numbers is not a calculator, it is a brochure. Here are the results that should stop a project.
When the only rent that makes it work is above the FMR and you have no comparable to support it. If the model needs a figure above the 40th percentile and you cannot find two real local units letting at that level, the model is being carried by an assumption rather than by evidence.
That is not a reason to stop looking; it is a reason not to sign anything until you have looked.
When the unit is for a relative and you are running rent arithmetic anyway. Roughly a sixth of surveyed owners were in this position.
The right analysis compares the build against the cost of the alternative arrangement, and this page cannot do it.
Running a return calculation to reassure yourself about a decision you made for other reasons produces a number that is either irrelevant or discouraging, and neither is useful.
When the whole case rests on nightly letting and you have not confirmed the route. If your approval comes through the by-right section, the tenancy must be longer than 30 days, and a model built on short stays describes something you may not do. Confirm the route first; it is one question at a counter.
When the rent works and the finance does not. This is the most common version, and it is the one the rest of this site exists to describe.
A unit can let well and still never be built, because approval and money are governed by different systems.
And a standing reminder about what we are. HyreADU does not design, permit or build accessory dwelling units.
It does not appraise, lend, invest, let property or prepare taxes, it does not rank or refer contractors, and it takes no referral fee from anyone who does any of those things.
That is what allows these tools to conclude that the numbers do not work, that the answer is to keep the garage, or that the honest next step is a question at the planning counter rather than a deposit.
How this calculator works
Once you have pasted a monthly figure:
gross annual = monthly × 12
after vacancy = gross × (1 − vacancy%)
after utilities = after vacancy − owner-paid utilities
Bedroom count does not look anything up. It is printed on the result so you remember which HUD column you used. The lookup is the HUD User FMR page (and Small Area FMR where ZIP-level numbers apply). FY 2026 is the current fiscal-year series as of this page’s data date.
We do not ship a table of 50-state or metro FMRs. The figure changes, some areas are revised mid-year, and a stale table would present itself as local knowledge.
What each input means
Inputs on this tool, in the order they appear on the form.
Input
What it is actually asking
Bedroom count
A label. Efficiency is HUD’s 0-BR column. Pick the column you actually copied from.
Monthly figure
FMR from HUD User, or a listing you trust more. Say which. 0 is the honest default.
Vacancy
Share of the year empty. 8% is a placeholder, not a market study.
Owner-paid utilities
Annual dollars you will pay for the tenant’s water, power, gas, trash. Comes off after vacancy.
Worked examples
Including one where the naive answer misleads, which is the example most calculators leave out.
An $1,800 one-bedroom FMR
Monthly $1,800, vacancy 8%, owner utilities $0. Gross $21,600. After vacancy $19,872. That is the engine test. Paste $1,800 into the ROI tool as rent if you want cap rate and the tight scenario. Do not treat $19,872 as money in the bank.
The same FMR with owner-paid power and water
Same $1,800 and 8%, plus $2,400 a year in utilities you pay. Net $17,472. FMR already has a utility idea inside it; paying utilities on top without checking HUD’s utility schedule for the area is how people double-count or under-count. If the tenant pays utilities, leave this at 0.
The one where a metro FMR misleads
A metro-wide two-bedroom FMR applied to a backyard studio on a quiet lot, or to a unit in a ZIP that has a Small Area FMR far from the metro number. The naive answer is the metro figure, because it was easier to find.
The honest answer is the Small Area FMR if you are in a designated metro, plus a look at actual listings on the block. Type the better number. The arithmetic does not care which, the decision does.
What changes the result
Monthly figure is linear. Vacancy is linear. Owner utilities are a lump. A $200 mistake in monthly rent is a $2,400 mistake in gross, before vacancy.
Switching from efficiency to two-bedroom on the form does nothing until you paste a different HUD column. That is deliberate. A dropdown that invented a rent would be a table we refused to ship, hidden in a select.
Local considerations
FMR is local by construction: metro, HUD Metro FMR Area, non-metro county, or ZIP for Small Area FMR. Your lookup is the local data.
HUD’s FY 2026 series is the vintage this page points at. If you are reading this after a new fiscal year starts (1 October), look up the new year. We will not keep a shadow copy.
When not to use this
Do not use FMR as a signed lease, a short-term rental model, or a lender exhibit without saying it is a 40th-percentile area rent. Do not skip the question of whether the ADU may be rented long-term where you live.
HyreADU does not let property and does not guarantee occupancy.
Financing categoriesSome products consider projected rent. Treat it as an assumption.
ADUs are highly localThe rental market is one of the local drivers, if the unit is meant to be let.
Questions this calculator answers
What is HUD Fair Market Rent?
An area rent HUD estimates at the 40th percentile (base rent plus essential utilities) to set payment standards for Housing Choice Vouchers and related programs. It is published for bedroom counts, by metro or non-metro county, and as Small Area FMR by ZIP in some places. It is not a survey of ADU listings on your block.
Where do I look it up?
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr.html for area FMRs, and the Small Area FMR tool for ZIP-level figures in participating metros. Use FY 2026 unless you have a reason to use another year. Some areas were revised after the original FY 2026 notice.
Why will you not ship a 50-state table?
Because FMR is local, it is revised, and a table we typed would be wrong in some metros on the day it shipped. The honest product is a lookup plus arithmetic on the number you pasted.
Is FMR what I will collect on an ADU?
Not necessarily. New ADUs can lease above or below the 40th percentile depending on neighborhood, finish, parking and whether the unit is legal. Voucher tenants are a specific market. Listings on the block are the other check. Use both.
What vacancy should I use?
A field, not a rule. 8% is a planning placeholder on the form. Tight rental markets can do better; a new unit in a thin market can do worse. The ROI tool floors vacancy at 12% in its tight scenario. Paste the annual figure from this page into that tool as rent if you want the three scenarios.
Are utilities in FMR?
HUD’s FMR documentation treats FMR as rent plus essential utilities. If you will pay water, power or gas for the tenant, type those annual dollars here so they come off. If the tenant pays them, leave owner utilities at 0 and remember FMR already has a utility idea inside it that may not match your unit.
What bedroom count do I pick?
The count HUD would assign to the unit, usually sleeping rooms. A studio is the efficiency (0 BR) column. The form’s bedroom field is a label on the result, not a lookup. You still paste the number from HUD’s table.
Can I use a Craigslist rent instead?
Yes. The field is “monthly figure.” FMR is the sourced public series. A listing is a market observation. Say which one you typed when you take the number to a lender.
Does this consider short-term rental?
No. STR rules are local and often restricted on ADUs. If that is the plan, confirm it with planning before you build a spreadsheet. This page is long-term monthly rent.
Does HyreADU let property?
No. This is arithmetic on a number you looked up. Matching is still being built.
Sources and methodology
Figures dated 26 August 2026. Last reviewed .
Fair Market Rents (FMR), FY 2026 dataset (HUD User, retrieved 2026-08-26. FY 2026 FMRs effective 1 October 2025. Documentation and lookup on this page. Some areas later revised (Federal Register 21 April 2026 notice).)
Small Area Fair Market Rents (HUD User, retrieved 2026-08-26. ZIP-level FMRs inside designated metros. Use when your PHA or your own check needs ZIP rather than metro.)
FY 2026 FMR notice (Federal Register / HUD, retrieved 2026-08-26. Original FY 2026 availability notice. FMR is 40th percentile, used for voucher payment standards, not as a lease guarantee.)
Related
ADU ROI calculatorPaste this monthly figure as rent, then look at tight/base/loose.