Williams County

Williams County sits at a 2.88% cap rate on a $348,966 median purchase price against $1,290 in median monthly rent, producing a gross rent-to-price ratio of 4.44%. Run the standard underwrite at 6.85% on a 20% down payment and you land at negative $990 per month in cash flow and a cash-on-cash return of -14.8%. Those numbers put Williams squarely in the appreciation camp, not the income camp. The 4.64% year-over-year home price gain backs that up, as does an appreciation score of 85 out of 100. The cash flow score of 37 confirms what the mortgage math already shows: this is not a market you buy for day-one yield. An overall score of 56 and a national percentile rank of 39th out of 1,000 counties tells you Williams is a specialized play, not a general-purpose rental market.

The investor this market suits is one who is betting on continued price appreciation and can carry a monthly deficit, or one who is putting enough cash down to materially shrink the mortgage payment. At 20% down, the monthly mortgage alone is $1,829 against $1,290 in rent, so the financing structure is the core problem, not the underlying asset. A cash buyer or a heavily capitalized buyer putting 40-50% down changes the math significantly. A value-add operator looking for distressed assets at a discount to the $349K median could engineer better entry-point economics, but the broader market at that median price and that rent level does not pencil for a leveraged buy-and-hold strategy. The affordability index of 55 and affordability score of 55 suggest the market is priced at a level where owner-occupant competition limits how much further rents can diverge from incomes, which caps the rent growth story absent wage increases.

The taxInsurance data takes some pressure off the carry cost narrative. At a 0.98% state-average effective property tax rate, North Dakota sits in a normal range, not a burden, and the $387 per month combined tax and insurance load is already baked into the $451 estimated expense figure in the underwrite. That expense figure is not the source of the negative cash flow; the mortgage is. Worth noting that the 0.98% figure is a state-average estimate from Tax Foundation 2024, and actual Williams County or township-level rates may differ, so verify the assessor data before closing. Insurance at 0.35% annually adds $1,221 per year, unremarkable for North Dakota.

The concentrated risk in Williams County deserves direct attention. Williams County is home to Williston, which sits in the Bakken formation and has a population of roughly 39,000 people at the county level. Oil patch economies have a documented history of sharp boom-bust cycles tied to crude prices. When oil activity contracts, rental demand, property values, and population can fall quickly, as Williston itself demonstrated during the 2015-2016 oil price downturn. No economic anchor data was provided, but the geographic and historical context of this county is inseparable from its commodity exposure, and any investor underwriting here without stress-testing a scenario where oil activity declines by 30-40% is leaving a major variable unmodeled. The stability score of 50 out of 100 reflects that risk.

Comparing Williams to its neighbors sharpens the decision. Burleigh County, anchored by Bismarck, shows a nearly identical price-to-rent ratio of 4.45% on a $352,675 median price and earns a slightly higher overall score of 58, making it a direct peer with less commodity concentration. Cass County, the Fargo market at $326,439 median and a 4.27% rent-to-price ratio, also scores 55 but benefits from a more diversified economic base centered on agriculture, finance, and healthcare. For an investor who wants appreciation exposure in North Dakota, Burleigh or Cass offer comparable price dynamics with meaningfully lower single-industry risk. Adams, Walsh, and Sargent counties all carry median prices well below $175,000, and while no rent data is provided for them, those price points suggest better yield potential for a cash-flow-oriented buyer willing to accept rural market liquidity risk. Williams makes sense over its neighbors only for an investor who specifically believes in the Bakken's continued output growth and wants direct exposure to that thesis in real estate form, with enough capital reserves to absorb a prolonged soft patch in oil activity.