How we count.
The short version: we anchor on market rent data from Zillow, HUD, and the Census, add rents submitted by the people who actually pay them, then build our own proprietary layer on top, including the Rent Reality Score you won't find anywhere else. Here's the longer version.
Data sources
Our rent figures are anchored on the Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI), a market-wide measure of asking rents that we treat as the source of truth for a city or ZIP's median. Bedroom-level breakdowns draw on HUD Fair Market Rents, and demographic and income context comes from the U.S. Census American Community Survey. Community-submitted rents are layered on top as ground truth from people who actually pay the rent. Together these cover 4,000+ US cities and thousands of ZIP codes.
Building the median
We publish medians, not means, because one luxury unit can skew an average for a small area. ZORI is the anchor: when HUD's bedroom figures run hotter than the market median, we scale them down to align with ZORI rather than inflating the headline number. We cap extreme outliers (above $20,000/mo) out of rankings and averages so a handful of ultra-luxury markets don't distort national comparisons, and we show sample counts alongside community figures, marking anything from fewer than 10 reports as provisional.
Rent Reality Score
Beyond the raw median, we compute a proprietary Rent Reality Score (0–100) for each city: how today's rent compares to that city's own established 10-year ZORI trend. Above 50 means rent is below where its own trajectory predicts (better value); below 50 means it's running overheated. Because each city is judged against itself, the score sidesteps the income distortions that trip up cross-city affordability models. We only publish scores we can compute with high confidence.
Fair Market Rent vs market rent
Where HUD publishes one, we show the Small Area Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom home alongside the market median. The two numbers often disagree, and that is expected, because they measure different things. Fair Market Rent is a policy benchmark that sets how much a Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) covers. It is the 40th percentile of standard-quality units and counts gross rent, so it includes essential utilities such as electricity, water, gas, sewer, and trash, and HUD updates it once a year for the federal fiscal year. Our market median tracks what homes actually rent for, usually excludes utilities, and updates monthly. We never blend the two: the market median stays anchored to ZORI.
Community submissions & verification
Anyone can submit a rent. We ask for ZIP, bedroom count, square footage, lease start, and the monthly rent. Email is optional; we only use it to follow up on flagged reports, and no account is required. For a share of reports we ask for a lease snippet or landlord email, which we hash and discard within 72 hours. For the rest we triangulate: does the rent fall within a reasonable distance of the current distribution for that ZIP and bedroom count?
Refresh cadence
We re-import ZORI weekly and recompute the index, including the Rent Reality Score, against all of our independent sources, then publish again whenever an approved community submission lands. Each rent figure carries an "as of" date tied to the underlying data import, not the calendar, so a stalled refresh shows its true age rather than a fake-fresh stamp. We also keep more than a decade of ZORI history (back to 2015) so you can see how a market got to where it is.
Privacy
We never publish a full street address. Only the city and ZIP are shown publicly. If you want us to remove a report you've submitted, email [email protected].