This paper examines the extent to which bedroom counts for units in the American Housing Survey (AHS) change between surveys and how this variation affects the analysis of rental affordability.

For the 43,000 units in both the 2009 and 2011 AHS surveys, 18 percent had a different number of bedrooms, as reported by respondents, in the two surveys. This level of survey-to-survey change is consistent with that found in previous research.