Studio to Four Bedrooms: What Each Extra Room Adds to HUD’s Rent Benchmark
Here’s a number that surprised us. In HUD’s rent benchmarks for fiscal year 2027, moving up from a studio to a one-bedroom adds a median of $64 a month. Moving from one bedroom to two adds $240. The first extra room costs about a quarter of what the second one does.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) publishes its Fair Market Rents for five home sizes, from a studio to four bedrooms, for every county in the country. Most coverage looks only at the two-bedroom figure. We looked at all five, in all 4,764 rows of the FY 2027 county file, to see what each additional bedroom is worth in the benchmark.
The counts are ours, built from HUD’s file; our rules for counting are in the Editorial Methodology. Remember what these figures are: estimates set below the middle of what recent movers pay, utilities included. They’re benchmarks, not asking rents.
The five figures, nationally
Taking the middle row of the file for each size gives this picture of a typical place in the country:
| Home size | Median FMR, FY 2027 | Step up from the size below |
|---|---|---|
| Studio | $933 | |
| One bedroom | $978 | +$64 (5.7%) |
| Two bedrooms | $1,228 | +$240 (25.7%) |
| Three bedrooms | $1,611 | +$390 (29.6%) |
| Four bedrooms | $1,850 | +$239 (12.9%) |
Two things stand out. The jump from two bedrooms to three is the biggest, in dollars and in percentage. And the jump from three to four is much smaller than the one before it.
Why a studio and a one-bedroom cost almost the same
In 1,579 rows, a third of the file, the one-bedroom benchmark is less than $25 above the studio’s. In 1,191 of them the gap is $10 or less. Those rows are concentrated in New England towns and in rural counties of Georgia and Texas. In six rows the studio figure is actually equal to or higher than the one-bedroom.
That isn’t a mistake in the data. The file doesn’t say why, but the likely explanation is that in much of the country there are very few studios to rent, so a studio and a small one-bedroom end up priced alike. Where studios are a real category of their own, the gap opens up, as the big-city figures below show.
Big metros: the steps get steeper
We repeated the count for the 64 Fair Market Rent areas with at least one million people. There the typical steps are larger in dollars: $97 from studio to one bedroom, $272 from one to two, $516 from two to three, and $376 from three to four.
Here are all five figures for twelve large areas:
| FMR area | Studio | 1 BR | 2 BR | 3 BR | 4 BR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York, NY | $2,593 | $2,729 | $2,971 | $3,760 | $4,121 |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA | $2,151 | $2,402 | $2,964 | $3,760 | $4,208 |
| Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH | $2,440 | $2,518 | $3,008 | $3,584 | $3,953 |
| Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, FL | $1,953 | $2,121 | $2,564 | $3,277 | $3,749 |
| Seattle-Bellevue, WA | $2,091 | $2,180 | $2,549 | $3,324 | $3,954 |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD | $2,111 | $2,204 | $2,438 | $3,107 | $3,658 |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | $1,751 | $1,831 | $2,169 | $2,846 | $3,183 |
| Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL | $1,678 | $1,780 | $2,011 | $2,586 | $2,954 |
| Dallas, TX | $1,491 | $1,536 | $1,807 | $2,275 | $2,892 |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | $1,554 | $1,619 | $1,762 | $2,099 | $2,493 |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | $1,390 | $1,493 | $1,734 | $2,287 | $2,537 |
| Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX | $1,233 | $1,261 | $1,497 | $2,017 | $2,502 |
Where the second bedroom costs most, and least
Among those 64 areas, the step from one bedroom to two is widest in San Francisco, at $694 a month ($3,003 to $3,697), followed by Honolulu at $591 and Los Angeles at $562.
At the other end, in a group of Southern metros the second bedroom adds remarkably little: $110 in Memphis ($1,191 to $1,301), $112 in Birmingham, $134 in Richmond, $137 in Raleigh and $143 in Atlanta. In each of those the two-bedroom figure is only about 9 percent above the one-bedroom. If you’re renting in one of them and hesitating between sizes, the benchmark suggests the bigger place may cost less extra than you’d expect.
Where studios are their own market
The studio-to-one-bedroom gap, tiny nationally, is $429 in San Francisco, $321 in Nassau-Suffolk on Long Island and $320 in San Jose. Compare that with Fresno, where it’s $9, or Fort Worth and Jacksonville, where it’s $20. In those places choosing a studio over a one-bedroom saves almost nothing on paper.
The roommate math
Because each extra bedroom costs less than a whole extra home, the benchmark per bedroom falls as homes get bigger. Across the file, the typical two-bedroom works out to $614 per bedroom, the typical three-bedroom to $537, and the typical four-bedroom to $462. A one-bedroom, by itself, is $978.
Take the Chicago area’s figures from the table:
- Living alone in a one-bedroom: $1,780.
- Half of a two-bedroom: $1,006 each.
- A third of a three-bedroom: $862 each.
On the benchmark, sharing a three-bedroom three ways costs each person $918 a month less than a one-bedroom alone. That’s the benchmark’s version of something every renter knows, with a dollar figure attached. It doesn’t account for the fact that utilities, which are included in these figures, don’t split quite so neatly, or for what sharing a kitchen is worth to you.
Why the three-bedroom step is so large
Part of the reason is probably the market, since a three-bedroom rental is often a different kind of home from a two-bedroom apartment. Part of it is a deliberate choice in how HUD builds the figures.
HUD’s FY 2027 notice in the Federal Register explains that the benchmarks for larger homes are adjusted upward on purpose: the adjustment adds 8.7 percent to the three-bedroom estimates and 7.7 percent to the four-bedroom estimates. The same notice says that figures for homes with more than four bedrooms are derived by adding 15 percent to the four-bedroom figure for each extra bedroom.
So when you read the three-bedroom column, part of the jump is the market and part is policy. Across the file, the three-bedroom figure runs from 19 percent to 39 percent above the two-bedroom one, and never outside that band. Bounds that tidy are another sign that the sizes other than two bedrooms are derived from the two-bedroom figure by formula and kept within limits.
The widest two-to-three steps among large areas are in Tucson, Honolulu and Fresno, each at 38.5 percent. In Honolulu that’s $978 a month, from $2,542 to $3,520.
The extremes, size by size
Across the 50 states and the District of Columbia, one area holds the top figure for every single size: Santa Cruz-Watsonville in California. Its benchmarks run from $3,230 for a studio to $5,748 for a four-bedroom.
The bottom of each column is in the rural South. The lowest studio figure is $621, in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. The lowest for every other size is in South Carolina: $677 for a one-bedroom, $885 for two, $1,054 for three and $1,163 for four, the last of those in Lee County.
Put the two ends side by side and you get the comparison that says most about housing costs in this country. In 3,868 of the 4,764 rows, 81 percent of the file, the four-bedroom figure is lower than what HUD lists for a studio in San Francisco, $2,574.
Some other counts that give a sense of scale:
- In 159 rows, a studio’s benchmark is $2,000 or more. In 199, a one-bedroom’s is.
- In 1,219 rows, about one in four, a studio costs more than the typical two-bedroom does nationally ($1,228).
- In 2,767 rows, 58 percent of the file, a four-bedroom home is benchmarked under $2,000 a month. In 1,141 it’s under $1,500.
- In only 28 rows does the four-bedroom figure reach $4,000.
For someone who can work from anywhere, those numbers describe a real choice: the benchmark for a small apartment in the most expensive coastal metros would cover a large house across most of the map. For everyone else they’re a reminder that “what does a two-bedroom cost?” has no national answer worth quoting.
A floor under the smallest places
One more rule shapes these columns from below. HUD’s notice explains that every area’s two-bedroom figure must be no less than a minimum: the typical rural figure for its state, with a national cap. For FY 2027 that national non-metropolitan rent is $1,014.
You can see it in the file. Exactly $1,014 is the most common two-bedroom value in the country, appearing in 373 rows across 20 states, most of them rural counties in Nebraska, Texas, Minnesota and the Dakotas. In those places the published figure may be the floor and not the local estimate, and since the other sizes are worked out from the two-bedroom figure, the whole row sits a little higher than local rents alone would put it. If you rent in a small rural county and the benchmark looks high next to what people around you actually pay, this is a likely reason.
How to use this when you’re choosing a size
- Look up all five figures for your area, not one. HUD’s lookup shows them side by side. The step between two sizes tells you more than either number alone.
- Compare the step with the listings in front of you. If two-bedrooms near you are advertised $500 above one-bedrooms and the benchmark step is $150, either the two-bedrooms you’re seeing are a different class of building or there’s room to keep looking.
- Go down to the ZIP code if you’re in a large metro. The gap between neighborhoods can be bigger than the gap between sizes. We measured it in our look at ZIP code rents inside the same metro.
- If you have a voucher, check the size you qualify for. The housing agency decides the number of bedrooms your household is approved for, and the payment standard is tied to that size.
What these steps don’t capture
Only the two-bedroom figure is estimated directly for most areas; the other sizes are worked out from it using the relationships between sizes seen in survey data, within limits. That makes the steps less precise than the two-bedroom number, especially for studios and four-bedroom homes, which are rare in many counties. And these are area-wide benchmarks: a new building and an old one of the same size sit under the same figure.
For how the two-bedroom benchmark itself moved this year, see our county-by-county comparison of FY 2027 with FY 2026.
Sources
- HUD USER, Fair Market Rents: the FY 2027 county-level file. Every median, step, count and dollar figure for a place in this article comes from that file; the calculations are ours.
- HUD, Fair Market Rents for Fiscal Year 2027, notice in the Federal Register: the 8.7 percent and 7.7 percent adjustments for three- and four-bedroom homes, the 15 percent rule for larger ones, and the state and national minimum rents.
Figures checked against the sources on October 5, 2026.
