Landlord Information

Being a Section 8 landlord can give you the satisfaction of making it possible for eligible families to enjoy decent, safe, and affordable housing. For more information, please call us at 772-461-7281.

Clients who receive Section 8 vouchers find their own rental housing and use the vouchers they receive from their housing agency to help pay the rent. Basically, the voucher means that the Federal Government will pay a specific amount of the rent.

If you wish to rent to Section 8 Voucher holders, you should inform the Housing Authority of the availability of your property and also indicate in your advertising that you welcome Section 8 Voucher holders. Ultimately, it is the voucher holder's decision whether or not to rent your property. Of course, as the landlord, you would screen the Section 8 voucher holder just as you would any other prospective tenant.

Housing Quality Standards (HQS)

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sets physical standards for housing receiving federal assistance. The primary standards are the HQS at 24 CFR 982.401. All housing funded through HUD's Housing Choice Vouchers (formerly known as Tenant-Based Section 8 Voucher) must comply with HQS as a condition of receiving funding. Local public housing authorities conduct initial and annual inspections to ensure compliance with HQS.

Fair Market Rents (FMRs)

FMRs are primarily used to determine payment standard amounts for the Housing Choice Voucher program, to determine initial renewal rents for some expiring project-based Section 8 contracts, to determine initial rents for housing assistance payment (HAP) contracts in the Moderate Rehabilitation Single Room Occupancy Program (Mod Rehab), and to serve as a rent ceiling in the HOME rental assistance program.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) annually estimates FMRs for 530 metropolitan areas and 2,045 nonmetropolitan county FMR areas. By law, the final FMRs for use in any fiscal year must be published and available for use at the start of that fiscal year, on October 1.

FMR Standard

FMRs are gross rent estimates. They include the shelter rent plus the cost of all tenant-paid utilities, except telephones, cable or satellite television service, and internet service. HUD sets FMRs to assure that a sufficient supply of rental housing is available to program participants. To accomplish this objective, FMRs must be both high enough to permit a selection of units and neighborhoods and low enough to serve as many low-income families as possible.

The level at which FMRs are set is expressed as a percentile point within the rent distribution of standard-quality rental housing units. The current definition used is the 40th percentile rent, the dollar amount below which 40% of the standard-quality rental housing units are rented. The 40th percentile rent is drawn from the distribution of rents of all units occupied by recent movers (renter households who moved to their present residence within the past 15 months).

HUD is required to ensure that FMRs exclude non-market rental housing in their computation. Therefore, HUD excludes all units falling below a specified rent level determined from public housing rents in HUD's program databases as likely to be either assisted housing or otherwise at a below-market rent, and units less than two years old.

FMR Areas

HUD defines FMR areas as metropolitan areas and non-metropolitan counties. With a few exceptions, the most current Office of Management and Budget (OMB) definitions of metropolitan areas are used. HUD uses the OMB definitions because of the generally close correspondence between them and housing market areas.

FMRs are intended to be housing market-wide rent estimates that provide housing opportunities throughout the geographic area in which rental units are in direct competition. Exceptions include a small number of metropolitan areas whose revised OMB definitions encompass areas that are larger than HUD's definitions of housing market areas. These exception areas are denoted as "HUD Metro Fair Market Rent Areas," (HMFAs).