Calhoun County

Calhoun County scores 72 overall and lands in the 86th percentile nationally across 1,000 counties, which sounds encouraging until you look at the cash-flow score: zero. The investment estimate returns a cap rate of zero and cash-on-cash of zero, meaning the rental income data needed to model returns is absent from the record. What the data does show is a median home price of $203,873, year-over-year appreciation of 2.72%, and an affordability index of 86, which places entry cost within reach for most individual investors. The appreciation score of 77 is the standout metric here. This is not a county where you underwrite to a yield on day one; it is a county where the thesis, if there is one, runs through price growth.

That appreciation score of 77 makes Calhoun a speculative fit for a patient buy-and-hold investor willing to accept an uncertain income picture in exchange for above-average price trajectory. The 2.72% annualized price gain is real but modest in absolute terms on a $204k asset, adding roughly $5,500 in paper equity per year at that pace. A cash-flow buyer has nothing here to work with from the provided data: no rent estimate, no cap rate, no cash-on-cash figure. A value-add operator would face the same blind spot, and with a population of 4,472, the tenant pool is thin enough that repositioning a property carries real lease-up risk. The affordability index of 86 does mean you are not overpaying relative to local incomes, which matters if you eventually sell to an owner-occupant rather than another investor, but that is an exit story, not an income story.

No economic anchors or employer data were provided for Calhoun, so the stability score of 50 sits unexplained by this dataset. A score at the midpoint of the range on a county with 4,472 residents is worth taking seriously. Small rural Illinois counties can be exposed to single-industry concentration or slow population drift, and with no employer information to review, an investor should conduct independent due diligence on the local job base before committing capital. The 50 stability score is not a disqualifier, but it is a flag that the market has not demonstrated the economic anchoring that pushes that number higher.

The tax and insurance picture is a genuine problem for the cash-flow math. Illinois carries a state-average effective property tax rate of 2.27%, which the data flags as very high, and at that rate the annual tax bill on a $203,873 purchase comes to $4,628. Add $550 in annual insurance and you are looking at $432 per month in combined tax and insurance carry before you pay a dollar of mortgage, maintenance, or vacancy. At 6.85% interest on an 80% LTV loan, the mortgage alone on $163,098 financed is roughly $1,070 per month. That means fixed carry costs before any operating expenses are already above $1,500 monthly. Any rent figure that does not clear that bar by a meaningful margin produces negative cash flow, and the dataset provides no rent estimate to test against it. The 2.27% rate is a state-average figure per Tax Foundation 2024 data, and actual county or township assessments in Calhoun may differ, but Illinois property taxes broadly are high enough that this deserves its own line on any underwrite, not a footnote.

The neighbor comparison is instructive. Kankakee County, with a median price of $211,066 and a rent-to-price ratio of 0.074, and Williamson County, with a median of $152,606 and a rent-to-price ratio of 0.084, both provide actual cash-flow benchmarks that Calhoun cannot. Williamson's 8.4% gross rent-to-price ratio is the strongest in the peer group and pairs with the lowest entry price. Madison County at $187,237 and a 7.0% ratio offers a lower price point than Calhoun with a functioning income estimate. McHenry County at $349,331 is priced out for most buy-and-hold investors chasing yield, though its $2,114 median rent reflects a very different demand base. All four neighbors with rent data carry the same 72 overall score as Calhoun, so the differentiation is not in the headline score but in the income transparency. An investor whose primary goal is yield should look at Williamson or Kankakee first. Calhoun makes sense over its neighbors only if an investor has a specific local knowledge edge, a targeted appreciation play, or a use case that does not depend on rental income to service the carry, and is comfortable underwriting a very high Illinois tax rate against an income figure they will need to source independently.