Methodology

Figures on this site come from one source: the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, 2020–2024 (ACS 2024 5-year estimates (Table-Based Summary File)), covering 2020–2024.

Tables used: B25064, B25077, B19013, B25071, B25070, B25003 (B25064 median gross rent; B25077 median value of owner-occupied homes; B19013 median household income; B25071 median gross rent as a percentage of household income; B25070 gross rent as a percentage of household income, by band; B25003 tenure).
Files: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/summary_file/2024/table-based-SF/data/5YRData/ (Table-Based Summary File, 5-year). Documentation: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/summary_file/2024/table-based-SF/documentation/
Geographies: nation, 50 states, the District of Columbia and every county or county equivalent in the file (NaN in all). Connecticut appears as nine planning regions, because that is how this release reports it. Puerto Rico and other territories are not included.
Retrieved: 2026-11-09
Terms: Census Bureau data are US government data; see Census open data policy and Census Bureau terms of service. No Census Bureau logo is used.

Survey estimates, not counts or prices

The American Community Survey asks a sample of households. The 5-year estimates pool 60 months of responses (2020 through 2024) to give figures for small places. Every estimate has a margin of error (MOE), which this site shows after the ± sign. Margins of error (MOE) are at the 90 percent confidence level. Estimates are not today's prices: they average a period in which rents and home values changed.

What each measure is

Median gross rent: What renters pay each month, including utilities and fuels the renter pays (contract rent plus estimated utilities). It covers renter households paying cash rent. It is not an asking rent for vacant apartments and not what a new tenant would be quoted today.
Median home value: The owner's own estimate of what the home would sell for, for owner-occupied homes (self-reported in the survey). It is not a sale price, an appraisal or a listing price.
Median household income: Annual income of the middle household in the past 12 months, in 2024 inflation-adjusted dollars.
Median rent as % of income: The middle renter household's gross rent divided by its household income (renters paying cash rent, where the share could be computed).
Renters paying 30%+ of income: Share of renter households whose gross rent is 30 percent or more of household income (a common "cost-burdened" benchmark). We compute it from Census table B25070, leaving out households where the share could not be computed.

Missing and unpublished values

When the Census Bureau does not publish an estimate (for example because too few households were sampled), the file holds a special code instead of a number. This site shows "n/a" with the reason and never shows zero. A missing margin of error is shown without a ± value.

Which pages exist

A county or planning region gets its own page only if rent, home value and household income are all published and each has a margin of error no larger than 25% of the estimate. Places that fail this test are still listed with their values on the state's counties page, marked "wide margin", but are left out of rankings and have no page of their own, because a figure with a very wide margin says little.

How the extra measures are computed

"Renters paying 30%+ of income" is the sum of the four B25070 bands from 30.0 percent upward, divided by all renter households minus those in the "not computed" band. Its margin of error follows the Census Bureau's published method for the margin of a sum and of a proportion. Other measures are shown as published.

Rankings and comparisons

State ranks are among the 50 states and the District of Columbia (51 areas; DC is not a state), highest first. "Bordering states" share a land border; states that touch only at a corner are not counted. Alaska and Hawaii have no land neighbors, so they are compared with the two states ranked just above and below. Comparison statements such as "higher than" use the margins of error: a gap smaller than the combined margin is called "not statistically different" at 90 percent confidence.

Limits

These are pooled survey estimates with sampling error. They do not describe asking rents, listings, sale prices or what a household would pay to move today. Median home value is the owner's estimate. Counties differ greatly in size, and small ones have wide margins.