Median Gross Rent
The median monthly rent paid by renter households, reported both including and excluding utilities.
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The median monthly rent paid by renter households in a tract. Two versions are published, because the Census Bureau collects two rent concepts and they answer different questions.
Gross rent is the full cost of occupancy. The Bureau defines it as "the contract rent plus the estimated average monthly cost of utilities (electricity, gas, and water and sewer) and fuels (oil, coal, kerosene, wood, etc.) if these are paid by the renter (or paid for the renter by someone else)," and notes that it "is intended to eliminate differentials that result from varying practices with respect to the inclusion of utilities and fuels as part of the rental payment" (ACS Subject Definitions).
Contract rent is the narrower figure: "the monthly rent agreed to or contracted for, regardless of any furnishings, utilities, fees, meals, or services that may be included." It is what appears on the lease.
The gap between the two is the utility cost renters carry directly, which is why gross rent is the fairer basis for comparing one tract with another and contract rent is closer to an advertised asking figure.
Metrics in this family#
Median gross rent
The current median gross rent, from the most recent ACS 5-year vintage.
Median contract rent
The current median contract rent, excluding utilities and fuels.
Median gross rent trend
Change in median gross rent over 3, 5, or 10 years, selectable in the tool. Because rent is a dollar amount, its trend is reported as a percentage change. There is no separate published trend for contract rent.
Considerations#
The trend is in nominal dollars, so a change measured across vintages carries general price inflation as well as any real movement in local rents. Comparisons between tracts within a single vintage are unaffected.
ACS 5-year estimates describe a five-year period, not a year, so windows shorter than five years compare periods that share years. The Bureau's guidance is "do not compare overlapping datasets" (Comparing ACS Data). The three-year window here is such a comparison: the two vintages share two of their five years. We publish it because it is the only recent-movement view the ACS supports at tract level, and read as a direction it still carries signal. It is not a before-and-after measurement, its movement is damped, and turning points show up late. Where the question is whether something genuinely changed, the five- and ten-year windows compare periods that do not overlap and answer it better.
Rent as measured here is what sitting tenants pay, not what a unit would let for today. In markets with long tenancies or rent regulation, the median lags asking rents, sometimes by a wide margin.
Renter households occupied without payment of rent are tabulated separately by the Bureau as "no rent paid" and are not part of either median.
The Bureau does not publish a median where a tract has too few renter-occupied units to support one, so both measures are missing in some heavily owner-occupied and in some very small tracts. Where the median is published for a small sample it carries a wide margin of error, and the Bureau publishes a margin of error with every ACS estimate.
Census tract boundaries were redrawn for the 2020 census. Estimates published on earlier boundaries are carried onto current ones before use — see geography.
Coverage runs through the most recent ACS 5-year release. Publication lags the present, and 5-year estimates are the least current of the ACS products by design.
References#
- 1ACS Subject Definitionshttps://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/subject_definitions/2024_ACSSubjectDefinitions.pdf
- 2Comparing ACS Datahttps://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/guidance/comparing-acs-data.html