HUD Fair Market Rents: How to read the Data

[Joshua Zapin]

I have a (potentially stupid) question about read the data HUD provides on Fair Market Rents (FMR) data you can get from https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr.html

If you download FMR History 1983 - Present: All Bedroom Unit data Zip file it contains columns for the FMR by year and bedroom number (e.g. fmr16_1 is fmr for 1 Bedrooms in 2016).

What does the number represented in that cell represent?  I believe it is just the dollar amount per month.  For example, 

fmr16_1	fmr16_2	fmr16_3	fmr16_4
647	788	1029	1336

I believe it is saying that for this particular region in 2016, it was $647 for a 1 BR, $788 for a 2 BR, etc.

I realize this may be a stupid question. But the only documentation I can get on that column from HUD is:

fmrxx_x

In the all bedroom file, the last x represents the number of bedroom and the first two x’s represent the last two digits of the year. For example, fmr98_0 is the zero bedroom FMR for Fiscal Year 1998.

Nowhere does it say what the value in the cell represent.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

JZ