Fair Market Rents - What Are They?

Landlords who rent or are considering renting properties to tenants who receive government assistance through the HUD Section 8 voucher programs, should know what to expect in terms of market rent for your property. HUD publishes a Fair Market Rent schedule each year for every State.

What are Fair Market Rents?
Fair Market Rents (FMRs) are primarily used to determine payment standard amounts for the Housing Choice Voucher program, to determine initial renewal rents for some expiring project-based Section 8 contracts, to determine initial rents for housing assistance payment (HAP) contracts in the Moderate Rehabilitation Single Room Occupancy program (Mod Rehab), and to serve as a rent ceiling in the HOME rental assistance program. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) annually estimates FMRs for 530 metropolitan areas and 2,045 nonmetropolitan county FMR areas. By law the final FMRs for use in any fiscal year must be published and available for use at the start of that fiscal year, on October 1.

Here is a link to the 2008 Fair Market Rent schedule.

Fair Market Rents defined


Sources:
http://www.huduser.org/datasets/fmr.html

Section 8 Inspection Forms

For those of you who rent properties to Section 8 voucher recipients, here are a few forms for your reference:


Inspection Report Form

Expired Inspection form. Contains details about how properties are rated
5280a

Texas Property Code

Wondering what the law says about residential landlord tenant agreements? Here is the Texas Property Code

PDF and Word Doc Format

Texas Property Code in HTML format

New Alabama Tenant Landlord Law

The new Alabama Tenant Landlord Law goes into effect next month. Below is a few links to help us get up to speed on this new law. There are benefits for both Tenant and Landlord, so please read it.

http://www.arisecitizens.org/

Lanlord Tenant Handbook

Landlord Tenant Brochure

Lanlord Tenant Law Fact Sheet

Landlord Tenant Law