Worth County

Worth County scores a cashFlow of zero and a capRate of zero in the provided data, which means the rental income figures needed to construct a yield-based analysis were not supplied. What the data does tell you is that the market sits firmly on the appreciation side of the spectrum. Home prices sit at $196,940, up 5.07% year over year, and the affordability index comes in at 88, meaning prices are accessible relative to incomes. The appreciation score of 86 out of 100 is the dominant signal here, and the overall score of 76 places Worth in the 95th national percentile out of 1,000 counties ranked, and 20th out of 99 Iowa counties. That is a credible ranking for a rural county with a population of 7,417, and it reflects price momentum more than rental income potential given the missing cash-flow and cap-rate figures.

The investor this market suits most clearly is someone buying for price appreciation rather than monthly income. The 5.07% price gain is meaningful in a low-population rural county where appreciation is typically muted, and entering at a median of $196,940 keeps basis risk manageable. A value-add operator who can buy below median, force appreciation through improvements, and hold for several years could work with these numbers, but they would be leaning on exit price, not rent-to-mortgage spread, to justify the trade. A pure cash-flow buyer should proceed with real caution: with no cap rate or cash-on-cash return in the data, there is no quantitative case for yield, and the $196,940 entry point at a 6.85% interest rate produces a purchase environment where thin rental rates in a 7,417-person county are unlikely to cover carry costs comfortably.

Those carry costs deserve serious attention on any underwrite. The state-average effective property tax rate for Iowa is 1.53%, flagged as high in the data, and at that rate the annual tax bill on a median-priced asset comes to $3,013. Add $670 in annual insurance and the combined monthly tax and insurance burden is $307 before you account for maintenance, vacancy, or property management. That $307 figure is a real line item, not a rounding error, and in a county where gross rents are likely constrained by local wage levels in a sub-8,000 population market, it compresses whatever margin exists. Iowa's 1.53% is a state-average estimate per Tax Foundation 2024 data, and actual Worth County or township rates may differ, so pull the county assessor numbers before closing any deal. If the local rate runs higher than the state average, the cash-flow case deteriorates further.

No economic anchors or employer data were provided for Worth County, so no claims about job stability or specific demand drivers can be made from this dataset. What the population figure does suggest is that rental demand is structurally limited. A market of 7,417 people has a small renter pool, which means vacancy risk is concentrated: losing one tenant in a small portfolio is a proportionally larger income event than it would be in a 50,000-person market. That concentration risk is worth stress-testing against a two-to-three month vacancy scenario at whatever rent you underwrite.

Compared to the five neighboring counties in the data, Worth is priced at the top of the peer group. Carroll County at $199,882 is the only neighbor within close range. Hardin County at $139,169 and Audubon County at $149,990 offer meaningfully lower entry points, and both carry overall scores of 75 or 77, within two points of Worth's 76. Fremont County at $166,833 and Crawford County at $174,920 fill in the middle of the price range, each scoring 75 or 77. The case for choosing Worth over a neighbor like Hardin at $139,169 rests entirely on the 86 appreciation score and 5.07% price momentum. If you are building a buy-and-hold portfolio where exit price in five to seven years matters more than monthly cash flow, Worth's appreciation trajectory justifies the premium over Hardin or Audubon. If yield is the primary objective, those cheaper-entry neighbors may produce better returns despite their lower appreciation scores, though that conclusion requires rent data that is not available here for any of the five.