Pike County

Pike County sits at a median home price of $125,017 with year-over-year appreciation of 7.75%, which is the headline number that explains its #1 national rank and 94 appreciation score. What's conspicuously absent from the data is any rent or cap rate figure, and the cash flow score is a flat zero. That tells you almost everything you need to know about where this county sits on the spectrum: it's an appreciation play, not a yield play. Without rent comps or a cap rate to anchor underwriting, you cannot build a defensible cash-on-cash model here, and the tool reflects that honestly by returning zeroes across the income metrics rather than fabricating a return. The affordability index of 100 and a $125,017 entry price are genuinely low, which means the appreciation story doesn't require a large check to participate in, but the income side of the ledger is simply unquantified with the available data.

The investor this market suits is someone who can hold a low-priced asset, tolerate an unproven rent market, and bet on continued price gains off a cheap basis. At $125,017 with 20% down, you're deploying roughly $25,000 in equity, which limits your downside in dollar terms even if the appreciation thesis softens. A value-add operator willing to do the local legwork to establish what rents actually clear in Pike County could find an edge here, because the absence of rent data in the dataset likely reflects thin comparable volume rather than zero rental demand. A pure cash-flow buyer who needs rent coverage proven in advance should look elsewhere; the data does not support that underwrite.

No economic anchors or employer data were provided for Pike County, so no claims about the local job base or demand drivers are made here.

Property taxes are a serious line item in this underwrite. Illinois carries a state-average effective property tax rate of 2.27%, which is flagged as very high, and at a $125,017 purchase price that translates to $2,838 in annual taxes and $338 in insurance, for a combined $265 per month leaving your account before you count mortgage, maintenance, or vacancy. That $265 monthly carry is meaningful when you have no confirmed rent figure to offset it against. At 2.27%, Illinois's rate deserves its own line on your pro forma, and you should not assume the county or township rate matches the state average; actual Pike County assessments may be higher or lower. Run the real tax bill, not an estimate, before you close.

The stability score of 50 on a county with 14,776 residents flags genuine concentration risk. A market this small is more sensitive to individual employer closures, demographic outflows, or a single large landlord repricing the local market than a metro of any meaningful scale. No vacancy or crime data were provided, so no claims are made there, but the population figure alone warrants caution about exit liquidity. If appreciation stalls and you need to sell in a thin buyer pool, the 7.75% YoY gain could reverse faster than in a deeper market.

Among the five neighboring counties in the data, Vermilion County is the only one with a rent figure: $815 median rent against a $93,310 median price produces a rent-to-price ratio of 10.49%, which is a materially stronger cash-flow profile than anything the Pike data can demonstrate. If yield coverage is your priority, Vermilion makes a clearer case on the numbers. Massac and Marshall counties sit at overall scores of 81, slightly below Pike's 83, with prices of $112,844 and $131,595 respectively, but again without rent data it's difficult to compare returns directly. Menard County at $198,736 is the most expensive neighbor with a score of 80, suggesting it's carrying price risk without a proportional score premium. You choose Pike over its neighbors specifically if you are optimizing for entry price combined with the highest appreciation score in the comparison set and you're comfortable underwriting blind on rents, not if you need a day-one yield story that you can show a lender or a partner.