Data Sources — Where Every Number on Section8Max Comes From
Every figure published on Section8Max traces back to an authoritative federal, state, or industry source. This page documents each source, the release cadence, and how we ingest and republish the data.
HUD Fair Market Rent (FMR)
Source: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, User Data Portal (huduser.gov). Cadence: annual, effective October 1 each year. Coverage: all metropolitan statistical areas and non-metro counties in the 50 states, District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. We ingest the FY 2026 dataset within 30 days of release and republish it via our ZIP-, county-, city-, and state-level lookup tools.
HUD Small Area Fair Market Rent (SAFMR)
Source: HUD SAFMR dataset. Cadence: annual, effective October 1. Coverage: 24 designated metropolitan areas including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas–Fort Worth, Atlanta, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and others. SAFMR provides ZIP-level rent figures instead of metro-wide averages. Our ZIP lookup surfaces SAFMR wherever it exists and falls back to the metro FMR everywhere else.
HUD Income Limits
Source: HUD Multifamily Tax Subsidy Project (MTSP) and Section 8 Income Limits. Cadence: annual, typically released in April. Coverage: county-level limits for Extremely Low, Very Low, and Low income categories, adjusted for family size. Used in our income-limits lookup and eligibility guidance.
HUD PHA Contact Information
Source: HUD PHA Contact Information database plus each PHA's public website for waitlist status, service area, and payment-standard publication. Coverage: 3,300+ Public Housing Authorities nationwide. Cadence: quarterly refresh with continuous corrections as agencies update contact information.
HUD PIC voucher data
Source: HUD Public and Indian Housing (PIC) system. Used for voucher-demand density (active vouchers per capita) inputs to our investment grades. Cadence: quarterly aggregate releases; individual PHA figures may lag.
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)
Source: FBI Criminal Justice Information Services Division (fbi.gov/cjis) plus licensed local-agency feeds for neighborhood-level detail. Cadence: annual national release with quarterly local updates. Used for neighborhood A–F crime grades on property lookups and market rankings.
U.S. Census Bureau
Source: American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, Decennial Census, and TIGER geographic files. Cadence: annual ACS release each December. Used for demographic overlays, population density, and household characteristics on market pages.
Property and price data
Source: public MLS feeds via licensed aggregation partners plus county assessor records. Cadence: monthly refresh for price and inventory metrics; parcel-level assessments refresh as counties publish new rolls. Used in deal analyzers, ranked market lists, and comparable-sales tools.
How we handle discrepancies
When two sources disagree — for example, when a PHA's published payment standard differs from 100% of the current FMR — we display both figures and label the PHA-published number as authoritative. We publish corrections in the changelog whenever a source dataset is revised.
Attribution
All datasets remain the intellectual property of their original publisher. HUD data is a public work of the U.S. federal government. Section8Max's aggregation, scoring, and commentary are our copyrighted work.
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