On October 1, HUD's fiscal year 2027 fair market rents took effect. For the Austin-Round Rock metro, a two-bedroom is now set at $1,817 a month. A year ago it was $1,852. Two years ago, at the peak, it was $1,949.
This is the second straight annual drop in a number that most renters never look up but that quietly shapes a slice of the Austin rental market. Here is what it measures, what changed, and how to read it next to the rent figures you will see in listings and news stories.
What a fair market rent is
A fair market rent, or FMR, is a federal estimate of the gross rent, meaning rent plus utilities, at the 40th percentile of rental units in an area. HUD uses it in voucher and related programs. It is a standard for those programs, not a market rent and not a quote for any apartment. A unit priced above it is not overpriced, and one below it is not a bargain.
For fiscal year 2027, HUD published the figures on September 2 and set them effective October 1. The agency builds them from the 2020-2024 American Community Survey, then trends them forward to FY2027, and this year it changed how it adjusts for utility costs, using a weighted composite of electricity, natural gas, fuel oil and water, sewer and trash. Housing agencies and other parties had until October 1 to ask for a re-evaluation, and HUD says it will finish any of those by January 8, 2027.
One Austin detail: the metro FMR area covers five counties, Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell, and the county rows in our records carry the same values as the metro. There is one Austin number, not one per neighborhood.
The figures, by bedroom count
| Size | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 | FY2027 vs FY2026 | FY2027 vs FY2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | $1,549 | $1,474 | $1,447 | -1.8% | -6.6% |
| 1 bedroom | $1,650 | $1,562 | $1,530 | -2.0% | -7.3% |
| 2 bedroom | $1,949 | $1,852 | $1,817 | -1.9% | -6.8% |
| 3 bedroom | $2,484 | $2,347 | $2,292 | -2.3% | -7.7% |
| 4 bedroom | $2,882 | $2,760 | $2,689 | -2.6% | -6.7% |
Every size fell, and the three- and four-bedroom drops were the largest. A four-bedroom is $71 lower than last year and $193 lower than in FY2025. A two-bedroom is $35 lower than last year and $132 lower than at the peak.
The longer line
The two-bedroom FMR was $1,195 in FY2017. It reached $1,949 in FY2025, which is 63 percent higher. Most of that came in two steps: a 12.1 percent jump from FY2022 to FY2023 ($1,451 to $1,626) and an 18.3 percent jump from FY2023 to FY2024 ($1,626 to $1,924). Since then it has slipped for two years running.
| Fiscal year | 2017 | 2019 | 2021 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | 2027 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 bedroom | $1,195 | $1,315 | $1,434 | $1,626 | $1,924 | $1,949 | $1,852 | $1,817 |
Austin is not alone. A Padmission analysis of the FY2027 release found decreases in 466 of 2,606 area-wide FMR areas, with Dallas and Houston among the large metros that declined while Los Angeles and Chicago rose sharply. Its write-up is a third-party summary, not HUD's own, so treat the counts as theirs.
Next to asking rents
The FMR is a lagging, survey-based standard. Asking-rent reports move faster. CultureMap Austin reported on September 21 that Zumper's August data put Austin's median one-bedroom at $1,260, down 16.6 percent from a year earlier, and the median two-bedroom at $1,610, down 19.1 percent. Zumper's CEO told the outlet that "renters now have leverage because owners are competing to fill it."
Put the two-bedroom figures side by side and the FMR is $207 higher than Zumper's median. That gap is not a contradiction. The FMR is a 40th-percentile gross rent that includes utilities, built from survey data with a lag. Zumper's is a median of asking rents on listings. They answer different questions, and neither tells you what a particular building will charge.
What a lower headline rent leaves out
Falling rents do not automatically mean a lower monthly bill. In an October 2025 Fox 7 Austin report, Shoshana Krieger of the tenant group BASTA said fees for pest control, valet trash and amenities are increasingly listed apart from the rent, and those add-ons are left out of the median rent figures but can add hundreds of dollars a month. The same report put Travis County eviction filings at 11,235 for 2025 to that point, against 9,981 the year before, and noted that more than half of Austin renters spend over 30 percent of income on housing.
Seven months later, Governing counted 14,558 eviction filings in 2025, up from roughly 13,000 in 2024, while median rent had slipped from $1,546 at the end of 2021 to $1,296 in early 2026. Lower rent and rising filings can sit in the same city at the same time.
What this means if you're renting here
- Do not use the FMR as a target. It is a program standard. Compare listings with each other, and ask what the unit's rent includes.
- Compare the all-in monthly number. Ask for a written list of every recurring charge, and add the utilities you will actually pay. Two apartments with a $100 gap in rent can end up closer than they look.
- Read the lease length and concessions together. A free-rent offer on a long lease and a lower rent on a short one are different deals, so put both on one line before you decide.
- If you use a voucher, the figure that applies to you is your housing agency's payment standard, which the agency sets locally. Ask the agency whether it is changing this year and when.
- If you own a rental, price from comparable listings near you rather than from the FMR, which is a program standard and not a market rent.
For the groundwork before you tour, our apartment-hunting checklist and search tips are still the practical places to start, and the research tools pull flood, tax and other records for a specific address when you are weighing a rental against buying.
How we sourced this
The FMR figures come from the HUD Office of Policy Development and Research API, loaded into our research database on September 30, 2026 (HUD source date October 1, 2026). Percent changes and dollar differences are our arithmetic on those figures. HUD's published methodology and dates are from NAHRO's summary of the notice. Asking rents are Zumper's, as reported by CultureMap Austin. The Fox 7 and Governing figures are as those outlets reported them, with their dates. We did not use MLS data for any figure here. Our copy of the FMR data covers the metro and its five counties; HUD's ZIP-level small-area figures are not loaded, and Austin is not listed as a mandatory small-area FMR market in the HUD feed we use.
If you are lining up a move and want a local read on what a specific building or street costs to live in, start with our rent estimate, then talk to a local agent about the rest.