Same Metro, Double the Rent: What HUD’s ZIP Code Data Shows for FY 2027
What does a two-bedroom cost in the Chicago area? The federal government’s official benchmark for fiscal year 2027 says $2,011. It also says $1,060. And $3,030. All three are correct, because they describe different ZIP codes inside the same metropolitan area.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) publishes its Fair Market Rents at two levels of detail. The better-known one gives a single figure per area, and it’s the one we used to track where the benchmark rose and fell this year. The other breaks the country down by ZIP code. HUD calls those Small Area Fair Market Rents, and they’re on the same data page.
We opened the FY 2027 ZIP code file and measured how far rents spread inside each metro. The counts are ours; HUD published the data. The rules we follow when counting are in our Editorial Methodology.
What’s in the file
The FY 2027 Small Area file has 51,871 rows covering 38,601 different ZIP codes, grouped into 2,600 Fair Market Rent areas. For each row it gives the benchmark for five home sizes, from a studio to four bedrooms.
Why more rows than ZIP codes? Because ZIP codes don’t respect county lines. In this file, 10,093 ZIP codes appear in more than one area, each time with that area’s own figure. If you look up your ZIP and find two results, that’s the reason. Use the one for the county you actually live in.
As with every Fair Market Rent, these are not average rents. They’re estimates set below the middle of what recent movers pay, and they include utilities. Figures below are for a two-bedroom home unless noted, and fiscal year 2027 runs from October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2027.
The typical gap inside a large metro
A metro with five ZIP codes can’t tell you much about spread, so we set a threshold. Of the 649 metropolitan areas in the file, 147 contain at least 50 ZIP codes. Those are the ones we compared.
In each, we took the highest and the lowest two-bedroom figure and divided one by the other. The middle result across the 147 metros is 1.85. In the typical large metro, then, the benchmark in the most expensive ZIP code is 85 percent higher than in the cheapest.
In 49 of the 147, one in three, the top ZIP is at least double the bottom one.
Where the spread is widest
Ranked by the ratio between the highest and lowest ZIP, three metros top the list with a gap of more than three to one:
| Metro area | ZIP codes | Lowest ZIP | Highest ZIP | Area-wide figure | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, FL | 73 | $1,080 | $3,520 | $2,349 | 3.26 |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 182 | $1,010 | $3,250 | $2,169 | 3.22 |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD | 488 | $1,140 | $3,660 | $2,438 | 3.21 |
| Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL | 370 | $1,060 | $3,030 | $2,011 | 2.86 |
| Monmouth-Ocean, NJ | 90 | $1,200 | $3,420 | $2,283 | 2.85 |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 208 | $1,020 | $2,880 | $1,917 | 2.82 |
| Dallas, TX | 260 | $1,020 | $2,710 | $1,807 | 2.66 |
| Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC | 129 | $1,010 | $2,680 | $1,785 | 2.65 |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 299 | $1,000 | $2,640 | $1,762 | 2.64 |
| Richmond, VA | 118 | $940 | $2,480 | $1,651 | 2.64 |
Measured in dollars instead of ratios, the widest gaps are in California: $2,580 between the top and bottom ZIP in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale area ($1,870 to $4,450) and $2,560 in San Diego ($1,670 to $4,230). Washington is third at $2,520.
Not every big metro is that uneven. In the New York City area the range is $2,620 to $4,460, a ratio of 1.7: expensive nearly everywhere. Phoenix sits at 1.88, with ZIPs from $1,380 to $2,600. A narrow ratio doesn’t mean affordable. It means there’s less of a cheap end to find.
Six more metros renters ask about
The ranking above is by ratio, which favors places with a very cheap outer edge. Here are six other large areas, with the lowest and highest two-bedroom ZIP figure and the area-wide number between them:
- Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX (327 ZIP codes): $1,010 to $2,250, around an area-wide $1,497. Ratio 2.23.
- Sacramento-Roseville-Arden-Arcade, CA (130 ZIP codes): $1,360 to $3,300, around $2,201. Ratio 2.43.
- Bergen-Passaic, NJ (114 ZIP codes): $1,440 to $3,420, around $2,282. Ratio 2.38.
- Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN (125 ZIP codes): $1,050 to $2,700, around $1,798. Ratio 2.57.
- Jacksonville, FL (82 ZIP codes): $980 to $2,540, around $1,694. Ratio 2.59.
- San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA (106 ZIP codes): $2,290 to $4,480, around $3,272. Ratio 1.96.
San Jose is worth a second look. Its ratio is under two, which sounds moderate, yet its cheapest ZIP code at $2,290 is above the most expensive ZIP in Houston. A ratio tells you how uneven a metro is. It says nothing about how expensive it is. You need both numbers.
Notice also what the low end looks like across very different cities: $1,010 in Houston and Denver, $1,020 in Dallas and Tampa, $1,000 in Atlanta, $980 in Jacksonville. The cheapest ZIP codes of large Sun Belt and Mountain metros cluster within a few dollars of one another. The high end is where these cities part ways.
How to find the figure for your own ZIP code
You have two routes, both starting from HUD’s Fair Market Rents page linked above.
- Download the Small Area file. It’s a single spreadsheet for the whole country. Open it, search for your five-digit ZIP code, and read across the row to the column for your home size. If your ZIP appears twice, pick the row whose area name matches your county.
- Use HUD’s lookup. Choose the fiscal year, then your state and area. For metropolitan areas the result includes the ZIP code figures alongside the area-wide one.
Either way, check that you’re reading FY 2027. The files for earlier years sit on the same page and look identical, and the figures change every year.
More ZIP codes sit below the metro figure than above it
The 147 large metros contain 17,081 ZIP code rows. We compared each with its own metro’s area-wide benchmark:
- 9,043 are below the area-wide figure (52.9 percent)
- 8,004 are above it (46.9 percent)
- 34 are exactly equal
So in a large metro, a ZIP code is slightly more likely to have a benchmark under the headline number than over it. That’s a count of ZIP codes, not of people or apartments: a dense downtown ZIP with thousands of rentals counts the same as an outlying one with a handful. But it does mean the single area-wide figure overstates the benchmark for a small majority of the map.
Why the top figures look so tidy
Look again at the table. Chicago’s area-wide figure is $2,011 and its highest ZIP is $3,030. Washington: $2,438 and $3,660. Dallas: $1,807 and $2,710. Atlanta: $1,762 and $2,640. Denver: $2,169 and $3,250.
In every one of those, the top ZIP figure is one and a half times the area-wide figure, rounded to the nearest ten dollars. We found the same in Los Angeles ($2,964 and $4,450). A pattern that exact isn’t the market. It’s consistent with a ceiling in how the ZIP code figures are set, holding them at 150 percent of the metro’s benchmark.
For a renter, the practical reading is this: in the most expensive ZIP codes of those metros, the published figure may sit below what the estimate would otherwise be. The real distance between the cheap end and the expensive end of those cities is at least as wide as the table shows, and possibly wider. It’s the mirror image of the floor we found in the area-wide data, where no figure is allowed to drop more than 10 percent in a year.
The extremes
The highest two-bedroom figure in the entire file is $5,260, in ZIP code 95060 in the Santa Cruz-Watsonville area of California. Across the country, 1,387 ZIP codes have a two-bedroom benchmark of $3,000 or more, and 4,692 have one under $1,000.
Outside the metros, the ZIP code file adds little. In 22 of the 1,951 non-metropolitan areas there’s no difference at all: every ZIP carries the same figure. The ZIP-level data earns its keep in cities.
A worked example: reading a listing against the data
Say you’re looking at a two-bedroom in the Chicago area advertised at $1,900 a month, with heat included and other utilities on you.
- Find the ZIP figure, not the metro figure. The area-wide $2,011 doesn’t tell you much. Suppose the apartment’s ZIP code shows $2,400.
- Add utilities to the rent. The benchmark includes them. If you estimate $150 a month for electricity, water and gas for cooking, your comparable cost is about $2,050.
- Remember where the benchmark sits. It’s set below the middle of the market, so most recent rentals in the ZIP cost more than $2,400 with utilities.
- Read the result. At $2,050 against $2,400, this listing is priced under a figure that is itself on the low side. That can be a good deal. It’s also the profile of a listing worth verifying carefully before you pay anything.
That last point isn’t paranoia. The Federal Trade Commission lists a rent well below the rest of the area as a warning sign of a fake listing, and we go through the checks in our guide to rental listing scams. The ZIP figure gives you a way to tell “cheap for the neighborhood” from “too cheap to be real.”
The dollar amounts in this example are invented to show the method. Look up the real figure for any ZIP code you’re considering.
If you have a housing voucher, this matters more
Fair Market Rents exist to run housing programs, and the ZIP code version was created so that a voucher could reach further in costlier neighborhoods instead of being tied to one metro-wide number. The file reflects that: next to each ZIP figure it lists two more columns, at 90 percent and 110 percent of it, labeled as payment standards.
Whether your housing agency uses ZIP-level figures, and what payment standard it sets within that range, is the agency’s decision. If you hold a voucher and are choosing between neighborhoods, ask the agency directly which payment standard applies to each ZIP code you’re considering. The answer can differ by hundreds of dollars a month between two addresses a few miles apart.
What this data won’t tell you
A ZIP code is still a blunt tool. It can hold a block of new towers and a street of old walk-ups, and the benchmark blends them. It doesn’t know about the condition of a building, whether there’s parking, or what a particular landlord is asking. It’s built on survey data collected before the year it applies to. And where few rentals exist, the estimate rests on little.
Treat it as a second opinion on the price, drawn up by someone with no stake in the deal.
Three ways to put it to use
- Widen your search with numbers, not guesses. Pull the figures for the ZIP codes around the one you first had in mind. In a metro with a three-to-one spread, a neighboring ZIP can change your budget more than any negotiation.
- Check a listing in two minutes. ZIP figure, plus your utility estimate, against the asking rent. Far above, ask what justifies it. Far below, verify who you’re dealing with.
- Bring it to a renewal conversation. It won’t bind your landlord, and it’s a benchmark, not a market survey. But “the official figure for this ZIP code is X” is a firmer starting point than “that seems like a lot.”
Sources
- HUD USER, Fair Market Rents: the FY 2027 Small Area (ZIP code) file and the FY 2027 county-level file. Every count, ratio, range and dollar figure for a real place in this article comes from these two files; the calculations and the observation about the 150 percent pattern are ours.
- 24 CFR 888.113: what a Fair Market Rent measures, and the rule limiting year-to-year decreases.
- Federal Trade Commission, Data Spotlight on rental scams (December 2025): a rent far below the area’s as a warning sign.
Figures checked against the sources on October 5, 2026.
