Methodology

Because survey respondents are not asked there exact rent, but rather are asked to choose from a set of rent "ranges", the best approximation that can be provided for the Avg Rent of the respondents is a Weighted Average of the number of respondents X the avg. rent of each rent range. Note that this rent accounts for all occupancies, with varied numbers of bedrooms,etc. Consider the following example:

These values are what are retrieved from the U.S Census 2011 ACS 5-year average Survey:

From this data, a weighted average calculation is performed as follows: