Fair market rent
Fair Market Rent is a term in real estate that indicates the amount of money that a given property would command, if it were open for leasing at the moment. The term is primarily used in the United States.
Fair market rent is an important concept both in the Housing and Urban Development's ability to determine how much of the rent is covered by the government for those tenants who are part of Section 8, as well as by other governmental institutions.[1]
Fair market rent is sometimes used by appraisal districts to determine tax rates. [2]
U.S. HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) publishes Fair Market Rents and Income Limits (respectively, the basis for how much program administrators will subsidize housing units, and the maximum incomes that tenants may not exceed in order to qualify for subsidized housing) on an annual basis. These figures vary throughout the country based on a number of determining factors, such as local economic conditions and housing demand.
The most reliable and up-to-date source of this information is the HUD USER Clearinghouse website www.HUDUSER.org; specifically, the Fair Market Rents and Income Limits dataset pages.
HUD has produced a mobile app that provides access to the relevant data from Android-based smart phones and iPhones, as well as some Blackberry models.