Methodology

What the tool shows

For each public housing project in HUD's file, the tool shows its basic RAD contract rents by bedroom size, adds the utility allowance to give a gross rent, and compares that gross rent with HUD's Fair Market Rent. It then lists the repositioning routes the agency's size opens, and sizes the first mortgage the project's rents could support.

It does not price the RAD/Section 18 blends, Opportunity Zone boosts, alternate FMRs or rent caps for a particular conversion. Those turn on facts HUD's file does not hold, such as the scope of rehabilitation, and the routes are described rather than priced.

Sources and data year

• HUD's RAD Contract Rents Look-up Tool , FY2026, last updated by HUD 05/27/2026: each project's units, its 2024 public housing funding (Operating Fund, tenant rents, Capital Fund), the OCAFs for 2025 and 2026, its contract rent, utility allowance and per-bedroom RAD rents, and the FMRs HUD priced it on.
• Fair Market Rents, from HUD's published county FMR files.

The figures always follow HUD's current workbook: its rents, its OCAFs and its FMRs are updated together when HUD publishes a new workbook, and never ahead of it. FY 2027 FMRs took effect Oct 1, 2026; the comparison stays on FY2026 FMRs, the basis of HUD's current workbook, until HUD's next one.

How the figures are calculated

RAD contract rents

The basic RAD contract rents are HUD's, exactly as its workbook gives them. HUD builds each project's weighted contract rent from its 2024 Operating Fund, Capital Fund and tenant rents, trended by the OCAFs, and spreads it across bedroom sizes in proportion to each size's FMR.

Gross rent and % of FMR

A Fair Market Rent is a gross rent: it includes utilities. So the tool adds the project's utility allowance to the contract rent before comparing. HUD's file gives one estimated average utility allowance per project, not one per bedroom size, so the same allowance is added at every size. The project's total "% of FMR" is properly represented, but the per-bedroom figures, since they use a project-level utility allowance, are estimates.

The headline percentage is the project's annual gross rent over its annual FMR, both weighted by its units, computed from the unrounded annual rent as HUD's workbook does, so it matches HUD's figure. The annual rent shown is rounded to the nearest $1,000.

Rent levels as a percentage of FMR

The pro forma can price a project at 90%, 100% or 110% of FMR as well as at its RAD rents. Each level is that percentage of the FMR, less the utility allowance, so it is a net contract rent, like the RAD rents. At 110% it equals the project-based voucher rent cap. A level can be below a project's RAD rents, and the tool says so when it is.

Agency size and routes

After displaying the project's RAD rents and how they compare with FMR, the tool then displays the available ways in which the project might be able to increase its RAD rents, which vary by the agency's size. Size is counted across all of the agency's public housing projects in HUD's file. For each size, the tool shows these options:

• For Very Small PHAs (75 units or fewer, Notice PIH 2026-23), the options include Section 18 for Very Small PHAs (where 100% of the units are eligible for Section 8 Tenant Protection Vouchers), with rents set at the lower of the reasonable rent or 110% of FMR; or the RAD/Section 18 Small PHA Blend, which converts 90% of units at Section 18 levels and can still be the better choice for reasons that are not about rent.
• For Small PHAs (250 units or fewer), the option is the RAD/Section 18 Small PHA Blend.
• For larger agencies, the options are the construction blends (90%/10%, 60%/40% and 30%/70%), each on its own rehab test, and traditional Section 18, whose qualifying tests are property-specific. Both depend on facts HUD's file does not hold.

A project-based voucher (PBV) conversion caps rents at 110% of FMR. A PBRA conversion goes to 120% of FMR without a Rent Comparability Study, and up to 150% with one. The tool computes rents to HUD's caps only; it does not price a Rent Comparability Study.

The Opportunity Zone boost, up to $100 per unit per month for a PBRA conversion in an Opportunity Zone with rehab of at least 60% of HUD's Housing Construction Costs, is shown to agencies of every size.

The pro forma

The pro forma estimates the first mortgage a project's rents could support. Gross potential rent is the chosen rent level's annual rent; vacancy and bad debt, operating expenses and replacement reserves come off it; the net operating income, divided by the debt service coverage ratio, is the payment the debt can carry; and the debt is that payment's present value at the interest rate and term, rounded to the nearest $1,000.

Every assumption is editable. The starting values:

• Operating expenses per unit: (2024 Operating Fund + tenant rents) × 2025 OCAF × 2026 OCAF × 12, from HUD's own figures for the project.
• Vacancy 3%; bad debt 2%; replacement reserves $480 per unit per year.
• Interest rate 6.5%; amortization 30 years; debt service coverage 1.11, adjustable from 1.00 to 1.90.

When operating expenses and reserves leave nothing for debt service, the tool says the property supports no first-mortgage debt rather than showing a negative figure.

Where the tool departs from HUD's workbook

• Agency size comes from the unit counts, not HUD's size label. HUD's workbook labels each agency "Small PHA" or "Large PHA" and has no Very Small tier. The size tests are unit-count tests, so the tool applies them to HUD's own unit counts. On HUD's current file, 1,088 of 2,692 agencies are Very Small, and 92 agencies labelled "Large PHA" have 250 units or fewer (40 of them 75 or fewer). No rent changes; only the routes the agency is shown.
• The pro forma's assumptions are stated and editable. HUD's workbook gives no indication of where its operating-cost and reserve figures come from.
• Rent levels are net of the utility allowance, so they compare with the RAD rents on the same basis.
• One project's figures do not match its own units. For GA285000012 (Joe Wright Village), HUD's bedroom columns total 98 units while its cached figures were computed on 9. The tool uses the bedroom columns, as the original NCHM tool did; the question is open with HUD's data.

HUD's workbook also prices the blends and the Opportunity Zone boost, adding transitional funding and the boost without checking the program rent caps. This tool does not price either, so none of its figures depends on that.

Disclaimers