Section 8 rents went up for FY2027. Most landlords won't collect it.

General Landlording & Rental Properties
1wFollow

Section 8 rents went up for FY2027. Most landlords won't collect it.

James JonesPro Member
Investor · Collierville, TN 38017 · Member since 2017 · 602 posts · 451 votes

Memphis operator since 2003, few hundred doors, majority Section 8, own crews and own management. This one is time-sensitive and it's the kind of money that gets left on the table quietly, so I'd rather post it now than write something cleverer next month.

WHAT HAPPENED

HUD published the FY2027 fair market rents, and they came out early this year - September 1 rather than the usual October. An analyst I've been trading notes with, Christo Wilken, re-ran his map on the new figures and pulled a cut I asked him for: the ten Memphis-area ZIPs where the typical single-family house is under a hundred thousand dollars. The three-bedroom figure went UP in nine of those ten, by six to twelve percent, with a median around ten.

If you own voucher units, a ten percent move on the three-bedroom number is real money. And most of the people it applies to are going to miss it. Here's why.

WHY MOST LANDLORDS WILL NOT COLLECT IT

A new payment standard does not flow through to an existing tenancy on October 1, or on any date the housing authority announces. It applies at that tenancy's own annual recertification, which is keyed to the lease anniversary. Your October tenant sees it in October. Your March tenant waits until March.

And in most jurisdictions it is not automatic even then. The owner has to request the rent increase in writing, ahead of a deadline that is typically sixty days before the anniversary. Miss the window and you do not get a partial year - you wait a full twelve months for the next one. Never ask and you never get it at all. The authority is not going to call and offer you more money.

THE HONEST CAVEAT

HUD publishing a number is not the same as your authority paying it. Each PHA adopts its own payment standard inside a band around the published FMR, and it adopts on its own calendar. When Christo and I checked the two Memphis-area authorities this month, the county authority still had only its 2026 schedule posted and nothing on FY2027 had surfaced from the city side. So right now there is a gap between the number that moved and the number that is collectible. That gap is the thing to watch, not to assume away.

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK

Pull every voucher tenancy you own and write down its lease anniversary. That date, not October, is your deadline clock. Then count backward sixty days and put that on a calendar. If any of those dates fall in the next ninety days, that is this month's work.

Then go to your own authority's site and find the adopted payment standard schedule, by bedroom count and by ZIP if they publish it that way. If it still says 2026, call and ask when the new schedule is adopted and whether increase requests submitted before adoption are honored at the new rate. Get the answer from a person and write down who said it.

Then submit the written request for every unit where the new standard exceeds what you are being paid. Rent reasonableness still applies, so the request has to be supportable by comparable unassisted units - the authority is not obligated to give you the payment standard just because it went up. Ask anyway. The cost of asking is an email.

THE PART I AM LESS SURE ABOUT

The sixty-day request window is how it works where I operate. I have read enough posts from other markets to know the deadline and the paperwork vary, and a few authorities apply new standards at recertification without a request. I would rather be corrected here than have someone in another state follow my timeline and miss theirs.

So - what does your authority actually require, and how far ahead? And has anyone here successfully gotten an increase mid-lease rather than at the anniversary? That one I have never managed and I would like to be wrong about it.

1Reply
1,919 views

Most Popular Reply

Jordan RayBusiness Member
Real Estate Agent · Memphis, TN · Member since 2023 · 642 posts · 328 votes
4d

This is excellent information and exactly the kind of operational detail that can quietly make a meaningful difference across a rental portfolio. I'm active in the Memphis investment market as both an investor and agent, and I think your biggest point is the one landlords need to pay attention to: knowing that the payment standard increased and actually capturing that increase are two completely different things. Memphis Housing Authority's current rent-increase form specifically requires written notice to the tenant and submission to the HCV program at least 60 days before the requested effective date, and the requested rent still has to pass their rent-reasonableness review. That makes tracking those dates just as important as tracking leases, renewals, insurance, taxes, and everything else we already monitor. I also like your point about not assuming the published HUD number automatically becomes collectible locally—you still have to know what the local housing authority has actually adopted and what your individual property can support. For anyone building a Memphis portfolio, this is another reason I'm big on having a strong boots-on-the-ground team and actually learning the market instead of treating rentals as completely passive: an investor-friendly agent who also owns rentals, a strong property manager, reliable general contractor, and good lending contacts can collectively catch opportunities and problems that are easy to miss from a spreadsheet. I appreciate you putting this out there because even a relatively small monthly increase multiplied across several doors and compounded over years becomes real money.

[email protected]662-642-1458
Jordan Ray - eXp Realty5112 Reviews
WebsiteView Page
1Reply
See this reply in the discussion

7 Replies

Jump to latestLatest
  • Drew SygitBusiness Member
    Property Manager · Royal Oak, MI · Member since 2012 · 12k+ posts · 9k+ votes
    1w

    Great stuff!

    The biggest challenge is getting tenants to sign the darn increase paperwork - especially if it means their part of the rent payment will increase!

    [email protected]248-209-6824
    Logical Property Management4.9458 Reviews
    WebsiteView Page
    0Reply
  • Jim Johnson
    Real Estate Agent · Memphis · Member since 2026 · 558 posts · 325 votes
    1w

    The local PHA piece is the one I’d want to hear more about too. The 60-day window is easy enough to calendar, but whether a new payment standard can actually be picked up mid-lease seems to be where the local rules really matter. Curious if anyone here has successfully gotten one approved before the normal annual recertification, and what their housing authority required to do it.

    0Reply
  • James JonesPro Member
    OP
    Investor · Collierville, TN 38017 · Member since 2017 · 602 posts · 451 votes
    1w

    Drew - that is the failure mode I under-covered, and it is the second time you have improved one of my posts, so thank you. Let me give the mechanic behind it, because I think most of the refusals people run into are self-inflicted.

    Whether the tenant's portion moves depends entirely on whether you stayed inside the payment standard. If the new standard went up and your gross rent still sits at or below it, the family's share is driven by their income - roughly thirty percent of adjusted monthly income - not by your rent. Their number should not change at all. Push the gross rent above the payment standard and every dollar of the overage lands on the tenant, and now you are asking a household to fund your increase. Of course they stall. They should.

    So the practical rule is: ask for the increase that fits inside the new standard, and say so in the same letter. I put one sentence in writing to the tenant - your portion is not changing - and the signature problem mostly disappears. Most of the resistance I have seen over twenty-plus years was fear rather than economics. Nobody had told them, so they assumed the worst and sat on the paperwork.

    And when the tenant's share genuinely does have to move, I take the smaller number. Fighting for the last thirty dollars a month against a household that can move and take the voucher with them is how you buy yourself a sixty day vacancy and an inspection cycle to collect three hundred sixty dollars a year. That trade is bad and it looks good on a spreadsheet, which is the worst combination.

    Jim - on your question about getting one approved before the normal annual recertification. The default answer is no. In general the rent to owner changes at the annual reexamination and not in between, and most authorities will tell you exactly that if you ask the front desk.

    But there is a door that people do not use, and it is not an increase request at all. It is a correction. If the original rent reasonableness determination was made on wrong facts - bedroom count recorded wrong, square footage wrong, a bath or a garage or central air not captured, comparables pulled from the wrong submarket - then you are not asking them to raise the rent, you are asking them to fix a determination that was incorrect when it was made. That is a different conversation, a different desk in some offices, and it can be processed off cycle. I have had that work and I have had it refused, so I will not tell you it is reliable. But it is the only mid-lease path I have ever actually seen produce money, and it costs you an email to find out.

    The practical version: pull the original determination on your worst-performing voucher unit and read it against the actual house. If the facts on that sheet are wrong, you have a case. If they are right, you are waiting for the anniversary like everybody else, and your job is to not miss the window.

    If either of you gets a different answer out of your own authority, post it. This is a thing where the local rule genuinely varies and one confirmed data point from another market is worth more than my opinion.

    0Reply
  • Richard (Ryszard) Cieplechowicz
    Member since 2026 · 48 posts · 10 votes
    1w

    From the admin side, the calendar is where this lives or dies. Anything tied to a lease anniversary should go in one tracker with the notice deadline counted back, not just the anniversary date. If it only sits in the lease file it gets missed.

    Same with the written request. Send it, keep a copy, and write down who you talked to and when. Agencies lose paperwork more than people think.

    0Reply
  • James JonesPro Member
    OP
    Investor · Collierville, TN 38017 · Member since 2017 · 602 posts · 451 votes
    4d

    CORRECTION, and I would rather post it loudly than quietly edit the text above.

    The ZIP-level figures in my original post are ST. LOUIS, not Memphis. The error is entirely mine. Christo Wilken sent me a cut from his St. Louis file - those ten ZIPs under a hundred thousand dollars are St. Louis ZIPs, and the two housing authorities I referenced are St. Louis Housing and SLHA - and I wrote it up under a Memphis label with his name attached to it. He caught it and asked me to fix it, which is exactly what he should have done. Anywhere the post above says Memphis in connection with those ZIP figures or those two authorities, read St. Louis.

    I want to be precise about what was wrong and what was not, because a vague correction is its own kind of dishonesty. The numbers were his and they were correct - I mislabeled the market they came from. The mechanism I described is my own operating experience and it stands: a new payment standard reaches an existing tenancy at that tenancy's own annual recertification rather than on the authority's effective date, and in most places the owner has to request the increase in writing ahead of a deadline commonly around sixty days. That part was not borrowed from anybody's spreadsheet and it did not change.

    One real update since I posted. SLHA's board packet for September 24 adopts the FY2027 figure at a hundred percent, for all fifty-nine ZIPs in that file, effective January 1 2027. That is a clean adoption, which makes the timing concrete for anyone operating in that market: tenancies with anniversaries in the first quarter are in position to capture it, and the owners who have not sent a written request roughly sixty days ahead will not. What is still unconfirmed is whether the new standard reaches existing tenancies at recertification or applies to new leases only. That distinction decides whether any of this matters to somebody who already owns the house, and I will post it here when it is known rather than assume the favorable version.

    Richard - your point is the best operational note in this thread and it is the one I would put on a wall. The notice deadline is the date that belongs in the tracker, not the anniversary, because the anniversary is the one people remember and the notice date is the one that actually forfeits the money. Counted back and entered as its own line. And on writing down who you talked to and when - yes. Every increase I have ever had to argue for was won or lost on whether somebody wrote down a name and a date at the time, not afterward.

    0Reply
  • Jordan RayBusiness Member
    Real Estate Agent · Memphis, TN · Member since 2023 · 642 posts · 328 votes
    4d

    This is excellent information and exactly the kind of operational detail that can quietly make a meaningful difference across a rental portfolio. I'm active in the Memphis investment market as both an investor and agent, and I think your biggest point is the one landlords need to pay attention to: knowing that the payment standard increased and actually capturing that increase are two completely different things. Memphis Housing Authority's current rent-increase form specifically requires written notice to the tenant and submission to the HCV program at least 60 days before the requested effective date, and the requested rent still has to pass their rent-reasonableness review. That makes tracking those dates just as important as tracking leases, renewals, insurance, taxes, and everything else we already monitor. I also like your point about not assuming the published HUD number automatically becomes collectible locally—you still have to know what the local housing authority has actually adopted and what your individual property can support. For anyone building a Memphis portfolio, this is another reason I'm big on having a strong boots-on-the-ground team and actually learning the market instead of treating rentals as completely passive: an investor-friendly agent who also owns rentals, a strong property manager, reliable general contractor, and good lending contacts can collectively catch opportunities and problems that are easy to miss from a spreadsheet. I appreciate you putting this out there because even a relatively small monthly increase multiplied across several doors and compounded over years becomes real money.

    [email protected]662-642-1458
    Jordan Ray - eXp Realty5112 Reviews
    WebsiteView Page
    1Reply
  • James JonesPro Member
    OP
    Investor · Collierville, TN 38017 · Member since 2017 · 602 posts · 451 votes
    1d

    Correction, and this one is mine to own. Christo Wilken pushed back on this thread and he is right.

    I ran two separate mechanisms together into one sentence, and the result was wrong in a way that could cost somebody money.

    What I wrote: that a new payment standard does not flow through to an existing tenancy until recertification, and that the owner has to request it in writing sixty days ahead or wait a full year.

    What is actually true: those are two different clocks, and only one of them is the owner's job.

    CLOCK ONE - THE PAYMENT STANDARD REACHING THE TENANCY

    Under 24 CFR 982.505(c)(4), when a PHA adopts a higher payment standard, it must apply that higher standard to a family already under HAP by the earliest of three dates: the effective date of a rent increase that would raise the family's share, the family's first regular or interim reexamination after the increase, or one year from the effective date of the increase. None of that requires the owner to ask for anything. It is the authority's obligation, not a favor.

    CLOCK TWO - THE OWNER RENT ADJUSTMENT

    That is the written request sixty days ahead of the HAP contract anniversary. St. Louis Housing Authority puts it at section 21.2 of its administrative plan. That is the clock with a window you can miss, and missing it costs you the contract rent increase for that year. It does not cost you the payment standard.

    So if you miss the sixty days you have not lost the FMR move. You have lost the rent adjustment. That is a real loss, but it is not the loss I described.

    TWO MORE THINGS WHILE I AM HERE

    St. Louis's published administrative plan is Revision 11, approved 2018. Section 22.3.2.2 predates the 2024 federal change. If you call and a front desk person reads you the plan, you may get the older framing. An owner who can cite 505(c)(4) by number is having a different conversation than an owner who cannot.

    And the one that is probably worth the most to somebody reading this: the authority will not approve a rent increase while failed inspection items are still open on the unit. If you have an open deficiency sitting out there, you are blocking your own increase. Clear the items first, then file the request. People sit on open items for months and then wonder why the increase did not go through.

    This is the second correction I have posted on this thread, which is embarrassing, and still better than leaving a wrong model sitting in people's heads. If you read my original version and concluded that missing a sixty day window costs you the payment standard increase for a year - that is a false belief and I am the one who put it there. It is not true. Pull your own authority's plan and read it against 982.505(c)(4).

    0Reply
Join the conversationCreate a free account to reply, vote on answers and follow this thread.
Log InJoin for Free