At the June 2026 endpoint, Zillow’s ZIP-level ZORI for 46805 was $973 per month, up 3.4% from the same month a year earlier. ZORI is a typical observed asking-rent index blended across rental types, not a lease-by-lease rent survey. The five-digit label is both Zillow’s ZIP market identifier and a matched Census ZCTA; a ZCTA is a statistical area and is not identical to a USPS delivery ZIP. For wider context only, the same Zillow index was $1,281 for the City of Fort Wayne, $1,288 for Allen County, and $1,284 for the Fort Wayne, IN metro. Those broader figures situate the ZIP’s lower index but cannot substitute for ZIP evidence or describe a particular listing.
Recent growth is positive, but its pace is the central historical tension. Exact same-month ZORI change annualized to 3.4% across one year, 2.9% across three years, and 5.5% across five years. The latest direction therefore confirms a positive longer path and is firmer than the three-year pace, yet it remains below the five-year path rather than restoring it. The series has full coverage, so missing-month gaps do not cloud those comparisons. Its annualized monthly-return variability of 3.6% limits the confidence that belongs in one current snapshot, while its 2.4% maximum drawdown records a modest prior peak-to-trough setback. The history is classified high-variability. Transparent national discovery ranks among history-eligible ZIPs were 931 for momentum and 2,321 for stability, where lower ranks are higher; these are backward-looking measurements, not forecasts or investment recommendations.
Three rent universes create a useful but non-interchangeable cross-check. The matched ZCTA’s ACS 2024 five-year median gross rent was $925; it is a survey result for occupied renter homes, includes selected utilities, and differs from asking rent. Its survey margin of error also cautions against false precision. The $973 ZORI is therefore higher than the ACS survey median without establishing that either measure is more appropriate for a particular apartment. HUD’s FY2026 FMR/SAFMR is instead an administrative, bedroom-specific standard, never asking rent. Scaling ZIP ZORI through the local HUD ladder produces modelled estimates, not measured bedroom rents: $774 for a studio, $804 for one bedroom, $973 for two bedrooms, $1,211 for three bedrooms, and $1,320 for four bedrooms. The ladder organizes size consistently but does not establish observed asking rents by bedroom class.
The 30% required-income screen is arithmetic only: $973 monthly multiplied through a year yields a $38,920 annual income threshold at that share. It is not advice, an affordability finding for every household, or an applicant qualification rule. Against the ZCTA’s $52,154 median household income, the simple annual asking-rent-to-income calculation is 22.4%, but household income is not renter income and ZORI does not bundle each renter’s utilities. ACS nevertheless reports 1,986 renter households spending at least that share of income on gross rent, representing a 48.6% burden share. That survey burden describes respondent households, not the payment pressure, eligibility, or affordability of a particular apartment.
Scale and availability measures require equally careful reading. In the matched ZCTA profile, 10,705 housing units support a 10.2% all-housing vacancy rate, while renters occupy 42.6% of occupied homes. Among the reported vacant-unit categories, 460 units were vacant for rent. These are ACS survey measures for all housing stock rather than a real-time apartment-listing feed. The vacancy categories do not demonstrate that any given unit is available, habitable, leaseable, or priced near ZORI. They also cannot be translated directly into the City of Fort Wayne, Allen County, or Fort Wayne, IN metro rent context reported above, because those wider figures serve as geographic context while this paragraph describes ZCTA housing stock and occupancy.
The direct rolling-three-month Redfin ZIP resale observation is a for-sale record, not rental transactions. It reports a $192,956 median sold price, a 3.6% year-over-year price change, 81 homes sold, and 20 median days on market. Inventory was 29 homes and months of supply was 1.1. Sale-to-list evidence remained below parity on average at 99.2%, even as 27.9% of sales closed above list. Together, those signals describe resale pricing and turnover in the ZIP at the stated endpoint; neither provides rental comparables, operating costs, property economics, or a valuation for a specific rental home.
The resale record both supports and limits the rent read. The resale-price increase and the latest asking-rent increase were both positive and close in magnitude, confirming that the two distinct current indicators were not moving in opposite directions. Yet the latest annual rent pace remains below its longer annualized path, so resale evidence cannot establish a continuing rent trajectory. Annualized ZIP ZORI divided by Redfin median sold price equals a 6.1% cross-source screening ratio only. It is not a cap rate, net return, expected return, property yield, or evidence about expenses, financing, vacancy at one building, or an investor outcome.
Limits define what this packet can and cannot resolve. Relevant property-level checks are the exact street address’s inclusion in the relevant ZIP and ZCTA geography, the actual advertised rent and lease term, bedroom count, utility responsibility, property type, condition, availability, and whether any reported sale concerns the same property. The packet supplies none of those unit facts. It also does not provide property-level list-price history, operating costs, or financing. Those checks test whether the separate evidence universes align; no area statistic sets a specific unit’s payment, vacancy, or resale outcome. The unresolved question is whether a given offering’s stated facts align with the separate index, survey, administrative ladder, and resale observations.
","findings":[{"body":"Zillow’s June 2026 ZIP index was $973, 3.4% above the prior June. The City of Fort Wayne, Allen County, and Fort Wayne, IN metro context values were all about $1,280, so the ZIP sits materially lower in that source. Because ZORI is a blended asking-rent index, this comparison does not set a rent for any property or bedroom.","title":"Current asking-rent index trails wider Zillow context"},{"body":"Exact same-month rent growth was positive at the one-, three-, and five-year horizons, but the latest annual pace remained below the five-year annualized pace. Full history coverage strengthens the comparison; the high-variability classification, 3.6% variability, and 2.4% maximum drawdown temper confidence in treating one reading as stable. Discovery ranks are descriptive history tools rather than forecasts.","title":"Positive rent history comes with uneven stability"},{"body":"ACS median gross rent of $925 comes from occupied renter homes and selected utilities, while ZORI tracks asking rents. HUD supplies administrative bedroom standards, and the bedroom figures are modelled ZORI estimates. The $38,920 arithmetic income screen and 48.6% ACS burden share convey different evidence; neither is an applicant qualification rule or a conclusion about a single apartment.","title":"Affordability evidence is cross-source and household-specific"},{"body":"Redfin’s rolling three-month ZIP observation shows direct resale activity: $192,956 median sold price, 81 homes sold, and 1.1 months of supply. Its price and sale-to-list metrics concern for-sale transactions only. The 6.1% rent-price screen divides annualized ZORI by sold price across sources; it is a screening ratio, not property yield, cap rate, net return, or expected return.","title":"Resale activity is informative but remains a separate market"}],"risks":["A ZIP-level ZORI blends rental types and does not state a unit’s bedroom count, lease term, utility treatment, condition, or availability, so a listing can diverge substantially without invalidating the index.","The ACS ZCTA survey represents a statistical geography, includes margins of error, and is not postal-delivery data; its occupied-home and burden results cannot identify a particular vacant unit.","HUD FMR/SAFMR benchmarks are administrative standards rather than asking rents, and the bedroom figures merely scale ZORI through that ladder; they are not observed bedroom-specific market quotes.","Redfin’s resale metrics cover a rolling three-month for-sale observation. Sale prices, supply, and sale-to-list outcomes do not reveal rental transactions, unit expenses, financing, or rental-property economics."],"qa":[{"a":"In this packet, 46805 is simultaneously Zillow’s ZIP market identifier and the matched Census ZCTA used for ACS. The ZCTA is a statistical geography created for tabulation, while a USPS delivery ZIP is a postal-service construct. Their boundaries and address treatment are not necessarily identical.","q":"How do the ZIP and ZCTA labels relate here?"},{"a":"ZORI is a typical observed asking-rent index across blended rental types. ACS median gross rent is a five-year survey statistic for occupied renter homes and includes selected utilities. HUD FMR/SAFMR is an administrative bedroom standard. Different populations, timing, cost treatment, and purposes mean these measures are context checks, not substitutes.","q":"Why do ZORI, ACS gross rent, and HUD standards differ?"},{"a":"No. The required-income figure simply divides annualized ZORI by a fixed 30% share, and the ACS burden measure summarizes surveyed renter households above that share of income for gross rent. Neither measure observes a particular applicant’s income, utility responsibility, lease terms, or actual payment, so neither can qualify or disqualify anyone.","q":"Do the income screen and rent-burden share establish affordability for a unit?"},{"a":"Redfin directly reports rolling three-month ZIP for-sale observations, including sold-price and marketing signals. It does not report rental transactions, operating expenses, financing, or a building’s net cash flow. Dividing annualized ZORI by median sold price creates only a cross-source screen, not a cap rate, property yield, expected return, or valuation conclusion.","q":"What can the Redfin resale evidence establish?"}],"sources":[{"key":"apartment_list_time_on_market","name":"Apartment List Time on Market — listing liquidity","release":"Apartment List 2026-07","pulledAt":"2026-08-08","url":"https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/category/data-rent-estimates"},{"key":"apartment_list_vacancy","name":"Apartment List Vacancy Index — rental vacancy","release":"Apartment List 2026-07","pulledAt":"2026-08-08","url":"https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/apartment-list-vacancy-index-methodology"},{"key":"census_zcta_facts","name":"Census ACS five-year — ZCTA housing and income","release":"ACS 2024 5-year ZCTA","pulledAt":"2026-08-08","url":"https://api.census.gov/data/2024/acs/acs5.html"},{"key":"hud_zip","name":"HUD USPS crosswalk and Small Area FMRs — ZIP rent fallback","release":"ZIP-CBSA 2025Q4 + SAFMR FY2026","pulledAt":"2026-07-26","url":"https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/usps_crosswalk.html"},{"key":"realtor_county","name":"Realtor.com Economic Research — county listing inventory","release":"county inventory 2026-06","pulledAt":"2026-07-28","url":"https://www.realtor.com/research/data/"},{"key":"redfin","name":"Redfin Data Center — inventory, days on market, and price cuts","release":"metro tracker through 2026-05-01","pulledAt":"2026-07-26","url":"https://www.redfin.com/news/data-center/"},{"key":"redfin_zip","name":"Redfin Data Center — ZIP resale activity and supply","release":"ZIP rolling 3 months through 2026-06-30; updated 2026-07-03","pulledAt":"2026-08-12","url":"https://www.redfin.com/news/data-center/"},{"key":"zillow_county","name":"Zillow ZHVI and ZORI — county values and rents","release":"county ZHVI/ZORI 2026-06","pulledAt":"2026-07-26","url":"https://www.zillow.com/research/data/"},{"key":"zillow_zori","name":"Zillow ZORI — metro market rents","release":"Metro_zori_uc_sfrcondomfr_sm_sa_month.csv","pulledAt":"2026-07-26","url":"https://www.zillow.com/research/data/"},{"key":"zillow_zori_city","name":"Zillow ZORI — city market rents","release":"zillow_zori_city.csv","pulledAt":"2026-07-29","url":"https://www.zillow.com/research/data/"},{"key":"zillow_zori_zip","name":"Zillow ZORI — ZIP market rents","release":"ZORI ZIP 2026-06","pulledAt":"2026-08-08","url":"https://www.zillow.com/research/data/"}],"history":[{"period":"2018-03-01","rent":571.007598},{"period":"2018-04-01","rent":572.079283},{"period":"2018-05-01","rent":571.220885},{"period":"2018-06-01","rent":587.406347},{"period":"2018-07-01","rent":595.645965},{"period":"2018-08-01","rent":596.963491},{"period":"2018-09-01","rent":594.673376},{"period":"2018-10-01","rent":603.612679},{"period":"2018-11-01","rent":608.471956},{"period":"2018-12-01","rent":611.116528},{"period":"2019-01-01","rent":613.163416},{"period":"2019-02-01","rent":611.773812},{"period":"2019-03-01","rent":616.424939},{"period":"2019-04-01","rent":623.04603},{"period":"2019-05-01","rent":628.558489},{"period":"2019-06-01","rent":622.068388},{"period":"2019-07-01","rent":616.776073},{"period":"2019-08-01","rent":625.029671},{"period":"2019-09-01","rent":631.894068},{"period":"2019-10-01","rent":638.315373},{"period":"2019-11-01","rent":635.38575},{"period":"2019-12-01","rent":639.742159},{"period":"2020-01-01","rent":638.085608},{"period":"2020-02-01","rent":648.178237},{"period":"2020-03-01","rent":639.319028},{"period":"2020-04-01","rent":642.463871},{"period":"2020-05-01","rent":638.827528},{"period":"2020-06-01","rent":648.494615},{"period":"2020-07-01","rent":666.199368},{"period":"2020-08-01","rent":672.470385},{"period":"2020-09-01","rent":677.707546},{"period":"2020-10-01","rent":674.705102},{"period":"2020-11-01","rent":677.470887},{"period":"2020-12-01","rent":672.713227},{"period":"2021-01-01","rent":676.099324},{"period":"2021-02-01","rent":681.152615},{"period":"2021-03-01","rent":693.567565},{"period":"2021-04-01","rent":718.99769},{"period":"2021-05-01","rent":732.580515},{"period":"2021-06-01","rent":743.150289},{"period":"2021-07-01","rent":737.451356},{"period":"2021-08-01","rent":739.530892},{"period":"2021-09-01","rent":755.777176},{"period":"2021-10-01","rent":774.475629},{"period":"2021-11-01","rent":803.429298},{"period":"2021-12-01","rent":824.974929},{"period":"2022-01-01","rent":851.832368},{"period":"2022-02-01","rent":857.198685},{"period":"2022-03-01","rent":866.641493},{"period":"2022-04-01","rent":852.300329},{"period":"2022-05-01","rent":860.74885},{"period":"2022-06-01","rent":868.81404},{"period":"2022-07-01","rent":877.607089},{"period":"2022-08-01","rent":886.75842},{"period":"2022-09-01","rent":878.007125},{"period":"2022-10-01","rent":877.872367},{"period":"2022-11-01","rent":874.156122},{"period":"2022-12-01","rent":878.053796},{"period":"2023-01-01","rent":878.411042},{"period":"2023-02-01","rent":878.591047},{"period":"2023-03-01","rent":884.965083},{"period":"2023-04-01","rent":891.200217},{"period":"2023-05-01","rent":894.785476},{"period":"2023-06-01","rent":893.005261},{"period":"2023-07-01","rent":890.538231},{"period":"2023-08-01","rent":883.99429},{"period":"2023-09-01","rent":888.151122},{"period":"2023-10-01","rent":899.897944},{"period":"2023-11-01","rent":902.165762},{"period":"2023-12-01","rent":898.378296},{"period":"2024-01-01","rent":889.45005},{"period":"2024-02-01","rent":886.36058},{"period":"2024-03-01","rent":888.542932},{"period":"2024-04-01","rent":893.287522},{"period":"2024-05-01","rent":904.841488},{"period":"2024-06-01","rent":907.346665},{"period":"2024-07-01","rent":920.387908},{"period":"2024-08-01","rent":932.168305},{"period":"2024-09-01","rent":942.006813},{"period":"2024-10-01","rent":936.204929},{"period":"2024-11-01","rent":930.936424},{"period":"2024-12-01","rent":936.987072},{"period":"2025-01-01","rent":945.442354},{"period":"2025-02-01","rent":953.72125},{"period":"2025-03-01","rent":949.719163},{"period":"2025-04-01","rent":948.690658},{"period":"2025-05-01","rent":940.842701},{"period":"2025-06-01","rent":941.695993},{"period":"2025-07-01","rent":936.260978},{"period":"2025-08-01","rent":933.760221},{"period":"2025-09-01","rent":930.978957},{"period":"2025-10-01","rent":934.588625},{"period":"2025-11-01","rent":943.103372},{"period":"2025-12-01","rent":944.774257},{"period":"2026-01-01","rent":947.910099},{"period":"2026-02-01","rent":949.136824},{"period":"2026-03-01","rent":955.95579},{"period":"2026-04-01","rent":960.4093},{"period":"2026-05-01","rent":967.068021},{"period":"2026-06-01","rent":973.333333}],"historySummary":{"pointCount":100,"firstPeriod":"2018-03-01","latestPeriod":"2026-06-01","coverageMonths":100,"coverageRatio":1,"changes":{"1":{"years":1,"startPeriod":"2025-06-01","endPeriod":"2026-06-01","startRent":941.695993,"endRent":973.333333,"change":0.033596128936698166,"cagr":0.033596128936698166},"3":{"years":3,"startPeriod":"2023-06-01","endPeriod":"2026-06-01","startRent":893.005261,"endRent":973.333333,"change":0.08995251820806471,"cagr":0.029127522767826042},"5":{"years":5,"startPeriod":"2021-06-01","endPeriod":"2026-06-01","startRent":743.150289,"endRent":973.333333,"change":0.30973956063414776,"cagr":0.0554483592877979}},"maxDrawdown":-0.023845849088504623,"annualizedVolatility":0.035919678590641095,"consecutiveReturnCount":99}}