How does section 8 determine what rent you are entitled to?

Question

I don't have any section 8 rentals at this time but I am looking into it as the numbers appear good on the surface.

FMR for 2015 in my county is $950 for a three bedroom house according to the Section 8 website.

http://www.huduser.org/portal/datasets/fmr/fmrs/FY...

I know the answer should be obvious but is that what they pay for all three bedrooms in my county? $950 is much higher than the market price of $750 I am currently getting for my 3 bedrooms.

Section 8 looks really attractive at that price point...

Thanks in advance for your responses.

Bradley Bogdan · Answer

@Christopher McGuire Maximum rents are a combination of the FMR (your $950 rate), less what utilities aren't included, and then potentially tweaked upwards a bit depending on your prospective renter's income. Your local housing authority will have the utility standards they use either at their office or online, and then if you use the happy assistance estimator I believe is still in the downloads section of BP, you can calculate within about $5 of what you could rent your place for to someone with 0 income, $1000/mo, etc. Considering the $200 gap between your current rent and the $950 FMR, I think you could probably get about $100 more a month in rent or more, without looking at the exact numbers.

If you want some help using the program to calc it all out, feel free to PM me. Its not the most intuitive thing.

Mark Ainley · Answer

They go by market value, size, area, tenant's income, utilities tenant pays and then they take comps from a site www.socialserve.com.  This social serve site is crucial for contesting rent determination and looking for rent increases.   We are sure to put all of our rentals on this site market or subsidy so they can use our own comps down the road.

Frank Gigliotti · Answer

I know that in Chicago they have recently started going off of market rates! As a matter of fact a college of mine put in for a rent increase and ended up getting a decrease because of the market rates....Crazy right

Christopher McGuire · Answer

Is the number on the website I posted what section 8 will pay for all three bedrooms?

Ron Drake · Answer

@Christopher McGuire in San Diego section 8 is lower than market rent.