DCA Payment Standards as proxy for market rent?

Question

Hi,What are people's opinion on using the DCA Payment Standards as a proxy for market rent? For my first rental property I was relying on rentometer, but according the latest DCA guidelines, I may be underpricing it by a decent amount.  ThanksAlex

Quentin Davie · Answer

Alex, I am a fan of using the DCA payment standards because the government/state of Georgia spends a lot of research capital to compose this list yearly. They do this in order to protect the government money and not pay more (voucher program) in one area than what tradition rent price/ salaries have demanded.

Rentometer simply collects data from user generated input and listings of rental data and surveys they conduct, so some of this data may be greatly fluctuating, because it pulls from landlords who only post on sites like zillow, zumper, etc. The next best way to find rental prices is have a realtor like myself pull the latest leased properties of the same bedroom size, location (within 1 mile) , and leased in last 6 months from the MLS. These numbers are really accurate and you can almost guarantee you will lease the property (depending on condition) for what the MLS comps show.

By the way DCA payment standards are shared for multiple counties (in case not found on the Greater Atlanta DCA list. Make sure to use current year because they are updated yearly.

Greater Atlanta : https://www.dca.ga.gov/sites/d...

Clayton County/ Jonesboro Housing Authority : http://jonesborohousing.com/?p...

Fulton County: https://cdn.website-editor.net...

Dekalb County: https://www.dekalbhousing.org/...

Decatur Housing Authority: https://www.decaturhousing.org...