How is an NSPIRE score calculated?

Every defect is assigned a severity — Life-Threatening, Severe, Moderate or Low — and a location: Outside, Inside, or Unit. Each of those twelve combinations carries a point value from HUD's Defect Severity Values table, and a Unit-located Life-Threatening defect costs 60 points against 2 for a Low defect Outside. The scored defects are weighted, added up, divided by the number of units sampled, and subtracted from 100. Non-scored defects are removed before any of that happens.

What is the Unit Threshold of Performance?

An automatic failure that looks only at defects inside dwelling units. If 30 or more points per unit sampled were deducted by unit defects alone, the property fails regardless of its overall score — a property scoring 63 on the main calculation is forced to 59. It is the part most summaries of the NSPIRE formula leave out, and leaving it out tells an owner they passed when HUD fails them.

What is a passing NSPIRE score?

60. At 90 or above the property is inspected every three years; 80 to 89 is every two years; 60 to 79 is annual. Between 31 and 59 a property may be reinspected more often, and two successive scores in that range lead HUD to consider administrative action. At 30 or below the property is automatically referred to the Departmental Enforcement Center.

Which defects are not scored?

All smoke alarm defects, all carbon monoxide device defects, blocked call-for-aid systems or pull cords higher than six inches off the floor, and missing handrails or handrails not installed where required. They are not scored and they must still be corrected within 24 hours — non-scored is not the same as optional. Six further categories, including fire-labeled doors and guardrails, were subject to delayed scoring in the version of HUD's calculator we hold.

Is this the same as a REAC score?

No. This is an estimate produced from figures you enter, using HUD's published model. It is not a HUD score and it is not a REAC result. HUD's inspection will sample units you did not, and will find things a walk-through does not. HUD says plainly that REAC will not consider analysis from its own calculator to support an appeal, and the same applies here.

NSPIRE score calculator

HUD's published scoring modelverified 31 Aug 2026HUD NSPIRE Score Calculator; Final NSPIRE Scoring Notice (FR-2023-07-07) and Final NSPIRE Standards Notice (FR-2023-06-22)

Estimate a HUD inspection score with HUD's own published model — including the auto-fail most versions leave out.

Step 1 — every defect you found

Count all defects, scored and non-scored alike, by severity and by where they are.

Severity	Outside	Inside	Unit
Life-Threatening	Life-Threatening defects Outside, Step 1 — every defect you found	Life-Threatening defects Inside, Step 1 — every defect you found	Life-Threatening defects Unit, Step 1 — every defect you found
Severe	Severe defects Outside, Step 1 — every defect you found	Severe defects Inside, Step 1 — every defect you found	Severe defects Unit, Step 1 — every defect you found
Moderate	Moderate defects Outside, Step 1 — every defect you found	Moderate defects Inside, Step 1 — every defect you found	Moderate defects Unit, Step 1 — every defect you found
Low	Low defects Outside, Step 1 — every defect you found	Low defects Inside, Step 1 — every defect you found	Low defects Unit, Step 1 — every defect you found

Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored

The subset from step 1 that HUD does not score. These are subtracted, never added — the list is below.

Severity	Outside	Inside	Unit
Life-Threatening	Life-Threatening defects Outside, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored	Life-Threatening defects Inside, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored	Life-Threatening defects Unit, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored
Severe	Severe defects Outside, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored	Severe defects Inside, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored	Severe defects Unit, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored
Moderate	Moderate defects Outside, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored	Moderate defects Inside, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored	Moderate defects Unit, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored
Low	Low defects Outside, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored	Low defects Inside, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored	Low defects Unit, Step 2 — how many of those are non-scored

Step 3 — units inspected

Number of dwelling units sampledThe number of units actually inspected, not the number in the property.

Enter your defect counts and unit sample size to see an estimated score. Nothing you type leaves this device.

What is not scored

Not scored is not the same as not required. Every defect below must still be corrected — the first four within 24 hours.

All smoke alarm defects
All carbon monoxide device defects
Call-for-aid: the system is blocked, or the pull cord is higher than 6 inches off the floor
Handrail defects: a handrail is missing, or is not installed where required

Scoring of the affirmative requirements

Six categories of defect exist in the standards but are not yet deducted from your score. HUD has extended that date more than once; the current one is 2026-10-01, set by PIH Notice 2025-27, published 2025-09-30, covering Public Housing and Multifamily Housing.

They have always had to be corrected. Not scored has never meant not required, and the extension bought time on the deduction, not on the repair. If your fire-labeled doors do not latch today, that is a finding today— from 2026-10-01 it is also points.

Fire-labeled doors. All fire-labeled door defects.
Guardrails. All guardrail defects.
Electrical — GFCI. An unprotected outlet is present within six feet of a water source.
HVAC. Three heating conditions, split by season: between 1 October and 31 March, a working heat source holding the interior at 64–67.9°F, or a heat source not working or the interior below 64°F; and between 1 April and 30 September, a permanently installed heat source damaged, inoperable, missing or not installed.
Interior lighting. At least one permanently installed light fixture is not present in the kitchen and bathroom.
Minimum electrical and lighting. Fewer than two working outlets in a habitable room, or fewer than one working outlet plus one permanently installed light fixture in a habitable room.

Fire-labeled doors are the first of those, and the one with a record attached — the fire door inspection log produces the annual sheet for them.

Counting repeats

This is the rule that most changes a count, and it differs by area.

Unit. A defect is scored once per unit — the same defect in unit 2 is scored again.
Inside. A defect is scored once per building — the same defect in building 2 is scored again.
Outside. A defect is scored once across the entire outside area, however many times it appears.

This is HUD’s arithmetic, not ours

HUD publishes the NSPIRE scoring model in two Federal Register notices and ships a spreadsheet that implements it. This page is a port of that spreadsheet, cell for cell. We are not interpreting a rule or asserting one — the model, the point values and the thresholds are all HUD’s, and both notices are linked below so you can check the arithmetic against its source rather than taking our word for it.

The part that a one-line formula loses

The model is often summarized as severity value times defects, divided by units sampled. That is the shape of a single cell, not the calculation. Three things sit outside it, and the third is the one that matters most.

First, it is a matrix: twelve point values, one for each severity crossed with each location, and the same defect costs thirty times more inside a dwelling unit than outside at the life-threatening end. Second, non-scored defects are subtracted before anything is weighted. Third — and this is the one — there is an automatic failure. If unit defects alone account for 30 or more points per unit sampled, the property fails whatever the main calculation says, and a score of 63 becomes 59. A calculator built from the one-line version tells an owner they passed when HUD fails them, which is the worst direction for that error to run.

Non-scored does not mean optional

Smoke alarms, carbon monoxide devices, blocked call-for-aid systems and missing handrails are not scored. They must still be corrected within 24 hours. The list is on this page next to the input, rather than in a footnote, because a person entering counts needs to know which ones to put in the second table — and because a screen that lets “non-scored” be read as “ignore” would do more harm than no screen at all.

What this tool refuses to do

It will not look up your property. Per-property score lookup already exists elsewhere, and building it here would mean maintaining a database of every HUD property in the country, indefinitely, on a site that is deliberately run without ongoing upkeep. A published formula stays true; a copy of somebody else’s database is wrong the day it is republished. So this estimates a score from figures you hold, and nothing you type is transmitted, stored on a server, or seen by us.

It also cannot tell you what HUD will find. An inspection samples up to 32 units, chosen by HUD, and a walk-through is not that sample.

The sources

Final NSPIRE Scoring Notice — the scoring model, published July 7, 2023.
Final NSPIRE Standards Notice — the standards and the severity definitions, published June 22, 2023.
HUD_NSPIRE_Score_Calculator_UPDATED.xlsx, HUD’s own calculator, last modified 2023-08-23. Transcribed 2026-08-31.

Once you know what a defect would cost, the next question is what you are required to have on file for it. The fire door inspection log and the compliance calendar both produce records an inspector asks for.

Questions people ask

How is an NSPIRE score calculated?: Every defect is assigned a severity — Life-Threatening, Severe, Moderate or Low — and a location: Outside, Inside, or Unit. Each of those twelve combinations carries a point value from HUD's Defect Severity Values table, and a Unit-located Life-Threatening defect costs 60 points against 2 for a Low defect Outside. The scored defects are weighted, added up, divided by the number of units sampled, and subtracted from 100. Non-scored defects are removed before any of that happens.
What is the Unit Threshold of Performance?: An automatic failure that looks only at defects inside dwelling units. If 30 or more points per unit sampled were deducted by unit defects alone, the property fails regardless of its overall score — a property scoring 63 on the main calculation is forced to 59. It is the part most summaries of the NSPIRE formula leave out, and leaving it out tells an owner they passed when HUD fails them.
What is a passing NSPIRE score?: 60. At 90 or above the property is inspected every three years; 80 to 89 is every two years; 60 to 79 is annual. Between 31 and 59 a property may be reinspected more often, and two successive scores in that range lead HUD to consider administrative action. At 30 or below the property is automatically referred to the Departmental Enforcement Center.
Which defects are not scored?: All smoke alarm defects, all carbon monoxide device defects, blocked call-for-aid systems or pull cords higher than six inches off the floor, and missing handrails or handrails not installed where required. They are not scored and they must still be corrected within 24 hours — non-scored is not the same as optional. Six further categories, including fire-labeled doors and guardrails, were subject to delayed scoring in the version of HUD's calculator we hold.
Is this the same as a REAC score?: No. This is an estimate produced from figures you enter, using HUD's published model. It is not a HUD score and it is not a REAC result. HUD's inspection will sample units you did not, and will find things a walk-through does not. HUD says plainly that REAC will not consider analysis from its own calculator to support an appeal, and the same applies here.