The collection period for the 2021 Rental Housing Finance Survey is now closed.

The Rental Housing Finance Survey provides a current and continuous measure of financial, mortgage, and property characteristics of rental housing properties in the United States.

The survey focuses on the financing of rental housing properties, with emphasis on new mortgages, refinanced mortgages, or similar devices such as deeds of trust or land contracts, and the characteristics of debt originations.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) collects this data because this is the only source of information on the rental housing finance characteristics. With these data, HUD can gain a better understanding of the rental loan origination volumes, property characteristics associated with these originations, and operating cost and revenue characteristics for the rental housing stock in the United States.

National and local policy analysts, program managers, budget analysts, and Congressional staff can use the RHFS data to advise executive and legislative branches about the financial characteristics of the rental housing stock in the United States and the suitability of public policy initiatives. The data will also help analysts to determine which properties take the most advantage of various government programs, and where changes to programs might be advisable.

Academic researchers and private organizations may utilize the data to facilitate their research and projects.

The rental housing industry will be able to use the data to benchmark individual project performance against national data to help make better business decisions. Rental housing is critical to solving the nation's affordable housing problems, and potential investors in the rental housing market will gain a better understanding of the ownership and financing structures of the industry with these data.

To see the latest RHFS statistics, click Data on the left side of this page.

Click on the appropriate survey questions and instructions below.

(All files are in Adobe PDF format and are for informational purposes only)

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sponsors the survey under the authority of Title 12, United States Code (U.S.C.), Section 1701z-1, 170lz-2(g), and 1701z-10a. The U.S. Census Bureau conducts the survey under the authority of Title 13, U.S.C., Section 8. Title 13, U.S.C., Section 9 requires that all information collected is kept strictly confidential.

The Census Bureau is required by Section 9 of Title 13 to keep your information confidential and can use your responses only to produce statistics. The Census Bureau is not permitted to publicly release your responses in a way that could identify your business, organization, or institution. Per the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015, your data are protected from cybersecurity risks through screening of the systems that transmit your data.

Below are a few common items you can use to verify the legitimacy of this survey:

1. Ensure the Web address provided in the letter is a "census.gov" domain.
2. Correspondence sent in the form of a letter or email will contain reporting instructions and a phone number for survey assistance. Any email correspondence related to this survey will come from a census.gov address.
3. On the sign-in screen, a warning message should be present stating the respondent is accessing a U.S. Government computer.
4. After clicking on the “Report Now” button in the Respondent Portal, the OMB Number and OMB Approval Expiration information will appear in the upper right on all screens of the electronic reporting instrument. The bottom of the screen should have a link for the “Burden Statement” which also contains the OMB eight-digit number.