Methodology and Sources
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Metric definition:
Estimated monthly rent (USD per month).

Ranking logic:
Higher values rank higher.

Methodology extracted from article:
Methodology The metric is estimated monthly rent in U.S. dollars for a metropolitan rental market. The direction is descending: higher monthly rent ranks higher. The target year is 2026. The row-level values come from a published Construction Coverage research table that combines HUD 2026 rent estimates with 2024 American Community Survey renter-occupied housing-unit weights. Metric and unit Monthly rent is expressed as U.S. dollars per month. Values represent market-level rent estimates, not individual lease quotes, asking-rent listings, or one apartment-size category. Coverage The table includes 21 confirmed U.S. metropolitan rental markets from the published source table. Municipal city boundaries, counties, ZIP codes, and neighborhoods are excluded. Source hierarchy Priority is given to the published row-level research table for values, with HUD 2026 rent data and Census ACS 2024 renter-unit data used as official input references. Status rule Rows are marked official_value because the underlying input series are official HUD/Census data. The source notes clarify that the row-level rent values are compiled estimates, not a raw HUD table copied line by line. The published method calculates a monthly rent estimate across rental types using HUD rent estimates and ACS renter-unit counts by size category. Missing values were not imputed. Markets without complete data in the source were not included, and no conflicting commercial listing sources were averaged into the values. In the event of a tie, the original methodology ranks the location with the greater one-bedroom rent higher. The table here preserves the published value order and explicitly notes the equal $2,593 values in the final included group. There are no official_forecast rows and no modeled_projection rows. No projection formula is used in this article. The 2026 label refers to the published 2026 rent-estimate snapshot, while ACS 2024 is used as the renter-unit weighting base. The metric does not measure rent burden, affordability after income, lease renewal prices, neighborhood-level rent, asking rents for luxury listings, or the price of a specific apartment size. It also does not rank global cities because no single official global source with consistent 2026 city-level monthly rent values was used. Next: Main ranking table → Back to chart ↑

Sources extracted from article:
Sources Construction Coverage — U.S. Cities With the Highest Rent Prices, 2026 Main row-level source for the published rent values used in the table. The study states that its values are based on HUD 2026 rent data and U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2024 renter-unit weights. https://constructioncoverage.com/research/cities-with-the-most-expensive-rents U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — 2026 50th Percentile Rent Estimates Official rent-estimate source referenced by the compiled study. Used to ground the 2026 rent snapshot and to avoid relying on listing-only data. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/50per.html HUD User — Fair Market Rents documentation Method context for HUD rent estimates, including how gross rents and local housing markets are defined for federal rent programs. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr.html U.S. Census Bureau — American Community Survey Official source environment for renter-occupied housing-unit data used as weights in the compiled methodology. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs

Limitations:
The dataset is generated from the published StatRanker article table. It inherits the limitations of the original source, metric definition, reporting period, rounding and coverage. The values should not be interpreted outside the stated unit and methodology.
