HUD Region 1 (New England) Has 1/3 of All FMR Areas, But Less than 5% of National Population.

In looking at HUD Fair Market Rents I had a "I didn't know that" moment after I discovered that:

• The 6 states within HUD Region 1 [New England] had 1,604 (34%) of the total 4,765 US areas with HUD published Fair Market rents. This disproportionate share of all US FMR areas mean that medians of all areas would be skewed by the large counts in New England.
• The population of those states represent less than 5% of the US population. 
• ONE state, Maine, had 11.4% /531 of all US published FMR areas, but only .4% of the US population.
• Tiny Rhode Island has 39 HUD Fair Market Rent areas; that's more than the 36 HUD FMR areas in Oregon, which has a geographic area 63 times the size of Rhode Island. [The Oregon county that I live in, Clackamas, has a larger area (1,868 sq miles vs. 1,545 sq miles) than all of Rhode Island].
• NOTE: Even though their are large numbers of published areas in NE, FMR's do not vary for every area. In Maine I counted only 19 different 2 BR FMR levels for FY 2011, even though there were 531 different FMR areas.

I don't think there is anything sinister going on, and the advent of Metro zip code or other smaller area FMR's may mean that areas in the West will see a greater number of HUD FMR areas in the future.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.