HUD publishes the score of every physical inspection it conducts, and nobody compiles it. We did. This is an original analysis of 34,922 HUD-assisted properties, covering the most recent inspection of each through April 2026, with 26 verified statistics on how those properties score, how often they fail, how failure rates changed when HUD replaced its inspection standard, and where failures concentrate geographically. Every figure is either computed directly from HUD's published inspection results by RapidEye Research or drawn from HUD's own scoring notice in the Federal Register, and each was checked against the source before publishing.
Key statistics
6 highlights from this report
Key statistics
Key takeaways
Most HUD-assisted housing inspects well, and a small tail inspects very badly. The median property scores 92 out of 100, but roughly one in twenty-three falls below the passing line, and public housing carries most of that burden. The single clearest signal in the data is that HUD's newer NSPIRE standard fails properties at several times the rate of the protocol it replaced.
4.30% of HUD-assisted properties fail their physical inspection.
Public housing fails at three times the rate of multifamily assisted housing.
Under NSPIRE, public housing failure rates run five times higher than under UPCS.
The median HUD inspection score is 92 out of 100.
1.39% of public housing developments score low enough to trigger automatic enforcement referral.
Failure rates range from 15.08% in Puerto Rico to 0.47% in New Hampshire.
How we built this report
This is a first-hand analysis of HUD's published inspection results, computed in August 2026 and checked against HUD's own scoring notice.
- We downloaded HUD's published inspection results
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research publishes the physical inspection score of every property its Real Estate Assessment Center inspects, as separate datasets for public housing and multifamily assisted properties. We used the releases current to April 8, 2026.
- We computed every distribution ourselves
34,922 properties with a valid score: 6,135 public housing developments and 28,787 multifamily assisted properties. Each dataset carries exactly one row per property, the most recent inspection, so every rate below is a share of properties rather than of inspections.
- Thresholds come from HUD, not from us
The passing line of 60 and the enforcement-referral line of 30 are HUD's, published in its NSPIRE scoring notice in the Federal Register. We applied them; we did not define them.
- Independent review
Written by one co-founder, reviewed by the other before publishing.
Scope caveat: these datasets cover only housing that HUD owns, insures or subsidises, so they describe the assisted stock and not the US rental market as a whole. Each row is a property's most recent inspection, and those inspections span several years, so the NSPIRE and UPCS groups were inspected at different times and the comparison between them is descriptive rather than a controlled experiment. Scores are point-in-time and a property's condition may have changed since.
RapidEye Research
How HUD inspection scores are distributed
Share of properties in each score band, public housing against multifamily assisted. Every property's most recent inspection through April 2026.
Bands below 60 are failing scores under HUD's threshold. Scores of 30 or below trigger automatic referral to the Departmental Enforcement Center.
HUD inspection scores, by the numbers
All 26 figures, grouped by theme. Figures marked Computed are our own calculations from HUD's published inspection results; figures marked Verified are stated directly by HUD.
The national picture
HUD's Real Estate Assessment Center inspects properties that HUD owns, insures or subsidises, and according to HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research (huduser.gov) about 20,000 such inspections are conducted each year. Pooling the latest inspection of every property in both published datasets gives 34,922 properties, of which 1,503 sit below HUD's passing line.
Statistic 1
34,922 HUD-assisted properties have a published physical inspection score: 6,135 public housing developments and 28,787 multifamily assisted properties.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 2
4.30% of those properties, 1,503 in total, scored below 60 and therefore failed their most recent inspection.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 3
The median score across all 34,922 properties is 92 out of 100.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 4
HUD conducts about 20,000 physical property inspections each year.
HUD Office of Policy Development and Research (2026)
Statistic 5
The published inspection results span February 2013 to April 2026, with one row per property representing its most recent inspection.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
What this means: The assisted housing stock inspects better than its reputation suggests. A median of 92 and a failure rate of roughly one in twenty-three is not a portfolio in general disrepair. The story is concentration: the problems sit in a small, identifiable tail, which is exactly the population HUD's enforcement thresholds are built to catch.
Public housing against multifamily assisted
The two programs diverge sharply, and the gap is the most consistent finding in the data. Public housing developments fail at roughly three times the rate of multifamily assisted properties and sit four points lower at the median.
| Measure | Public housing | Multifamily assisted |
|---|---|---|
| Properties | 6,135 | 28,787 |
| Mean score | 84.0 | 89.9 |
| Median score | 89 | 93 |
| Failing (under 60) | 9.65% | 3.16% |
| 30 or below | 1.39% | 0.49% |
| Scoring 90 or above | 46.89% | 67.90% |
| 5th percentile | 54 | 70 |
| 25th percentile | 80 | 87 |
Statistic 6
9.65% of public housing developments, 592 of 6,135, scored below 60.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 7
3.16% of multifamily assisted properties, 911 of 28,787, scored below 60.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 8
1.39% of public housing developments scored 30 or below, against 0.49% of multifamily assisted properties.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 9
46.89% of public housing developments scored 90 or above, against 67.90% of multifamily assisted properties.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 10
The bottom 5% of public housing developments scored 54 or below; the equivalent figure for multifamily assisted properties is 70.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 11
Public housing has a mean score of 84.0 and a median of 89; multifamily assisted housing has a mean of 89.9 and a median of 93.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
What this means: The difference is larger at the bottom of the distribution than at the top. Medians differ by four points, but the fifth percentile differs by sixteen. Whatever drives underperformance in public housing is not dragging the typical development down so much as producing a much heavier tail of severely deficient ones.
What changed when HUD changed the standard
HUD replaced the Uniform Physical Condition Standards with NSPIRE, the National Standards for the Physical Inspection of Real Estate. Because each dataset holds each property's most recent inspection, properties can be split by which protocol was used, and the two groups fail at very different rates. Some of this is by design: according to HUD's scoring notice in the Federal Register (federalregister.gov), NSPIRE weights in-unit deficiencies more heavily and adds an entirely new way to fail.
| Group | Protocol | Properties | Failure rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public housing | UPCS | 1,601 | 2.25% |
| Public housing | NSPIRE | 4,534 | 12.26% |
| Multifamily assisted | UPCS | 5,937 | 1.58% |
| Multifamily assisted | NSPIRE | 22,850 | 3.58% |
Statistic 12
Among public housing developments, 12.26% of those last inspected under NSPIRE failed, against 2.25% of those last inspected under UPCS.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 13
Among multifamily assisted properties, 3.58% of those last inspected under NSPIRE failed, against 1.58% under UPCS.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 14
NSPIRE adds a Unit Threshold Fail: a property with a unit point deduction of 30 or above is automatically adjusted to a failing score of 59 even when its overall score is above 60.
HUD NSPIRE Scoring Notice, Federal Register (2023)
Statistic 15
Under NSPIRE, in-unit deficiencies are weighted more heavily, and HUD states that properties with in-unit deficiencies are more likely to fail inspections.
HUD NSPIRE Scoring Notice, Federal Register (2023)
Statistic 16
NSPIRE no longer requires every building of a property to be inspected.
HUD NSPIRE Scoring Notice, Federal Register (2023)
Statistic 17
Across all NSPIRE-inspected properties, the failure rate rose from 3.11% in 2024 to 6.54% in 2025.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
What this means: Read carefully, because these two groups were inspected at different times and the comparison is descriptive rather than controlled. The properties still carrying a UPCS score are simply those not yet re-inspected. But the direction is consistent across both programs and matches the mechanism HUD documented: a standard that weights in-unit conditions more heavily, and that can fail a property on unit deductions alone, will fail more properties. For an operator, the practical translation is that condition inside occupied units now carries more consequence than common areas and grounds.
Where failures concentrate
Restricting to NSPIRE-inspected properties and to the 48 states and territories with at least 100 of them, failure rates vary by more than thirty-fold from top to bottom.
| Highest failure rate | Rate | Lowest failure rate | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Puerto Rico | 15.08% | New Hampshire | 0.47% |
| New Mexico | 12.20% | Idaho | 0.72% |
| District of Columbia | 11.11% | Vermont | 1.34% |
| Georgia | 10.75% | Massachusetts | 1.41% |
| Oregon | 8.65% | Iowa | 2.00% |
Statistic 18
Puerto Rico has the highest NSPIRE failure rate of any state or territory with at least 100 inspected properties, at 15.08% across 431 properties.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 19
New Hampshire has the lowest, at 0.47% across 211 properties.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 20
48 states and territories have at least 100 NSPIRE-inspected properties in the published data.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
Statistic 21
New Jersey, with 769 NSPIRE-inspected properties, has a failure rate of 8.58%, the highest of any state with more than 700 inspected properties apart from Georgia.
RapidEye Research analysis of HUD data (2026)
What this means: Geography predicts inspection outcomes more strongly than most operators assume, and the spread is not explained by climate alone. It tracks housing age and local construction stock, the same pattern found in the peer-reviewed Rochester work we cite in our rental inspection ordinance reference, where roughly 64% of the variance in violations traced to fixed housing-stock effects.
How the scoring actually works
Every threshold above is HUD's own, published in the NSPIRE scoring notice (federalregister.gov). The scale is unchanged from the previous regime, but what can trigger a failure is not.
Statistic 22
NSPIRE retains a 0 to 100 score, and any score under 60 is considered a failing score.
HUD NSPIRE Scoring Notice, Federal Register (2023)
Statistic 23
Properties scoring 30 or less are automatically referred to HUD's Departmental Enforcement Center for administrative review.
HUD NSPIRE Scoring Notice, Federal Register (2023)
Statistic 24
Scores calculated between 59 and 60 are treated as failing rather than rounded up.
HUD NSPIRE Scoring Notice, Federal Register (2023)
Statistic 25
HUD identifies three inspectable areas: Unit, Inside and Outside.
HUD NSPIRE Scoring Notice, Federal Register (2023)
Statistic 26
An asterisk beside a property score denotes an observed smoke detector defect, and a plus sign denotes an observed carbon monoxide detector defect.
HUD NSPIRE Scoring Notice, Federal Register (2023)
What this means: Two details matter operationally. The 59-to-60 rule removes the benefit of the doubt at the margin, so a property landing on the line fails. And the smoke and carbon monoxide detector designations are appended to the score itself, which means a detector defect follows the property in the public record independently of whether it passed.
Cite this study
Academic or press use: copy a ready-made reference. RapidEye is the publisher.
Quick FAQ
What is a failing HUD inspection score?
Any score under 60 on the 0 to 100 scale. HUD's NSPIRE scoring notice states that properties need to score 60 or above, that any score under 60 is a failing score, and that properties scoring 30 or less are automatically referred to HUD's Departmental Enforcement Center for administrative review. Scores calculated between 59 and 60 are treated as failing.
What share of HUD-assisted properties fail inspection?
4.30% across the portfolio. RapidEye Research analyzed HUD's published inspection results for 34,922 properties, covering the latest inspection of each through April 2026, and found 1,503 scoring below 60. The rate differs sharply by program: 9.65% of public housing developments failed, against 3.16% of multifamily assisted properties.
Are failure rates higher under NSPIRE than under UPCS?
Yes, substantially. Among public housing developments, 12.26% of those whose latest inspection used NSPIRE scored below 60, against 2.25% of those last inspected under UPCS. For multifamily assisted properties the rates are 3.58% and 1.58%. This is a descriptive comparison of two groups inspected at different times, not a controlled experiment, but the gap is consistent across both programs.
What is the median HUD inspection score?
92 across all 34,922 properties. Public housing developments have a median of 89 and a mean of 84.0, while multifamily assisted properties have a median of 93 and a mean of 89.9. Roughly two thirds of multifamily assisted properties score 90 or above, against fewer than half of public housing developments.
Which states have the highest HUD inspection failure rates?
Among the 48 states and territories with at least 100 NSPIRE-inspected properties, Puerto Rico has the highest failure rate at 15.08%, followed by New Mexico at 12.20%, the District of Columbia at 11.11% and Georgia at 10.75%. New Hampshire has the lowest at 0.47%, followed by Idaho at 0.72% and Vermont at 1.34%.
Data sources
Every figure on this page is either computed by RapidEye Research directly from the first source below, or stated by HUD in the second. Sources are named at the publisher level with their root domain.
HUD Office of Policy Development and ResearchPhysical property inspection score datasets for public housing and multifamily assisted properties, current to April 2026huduser.gov
Federal RegisterHUD NSPIRE scoring notice, thresholds and inspectable areas, 2023federalregister.gov