Cimarron County

Cimarron County sits at the extreme end of the affordability spectrum, with a median home price of $74,277 and an affordability index score of 100 out of 100. That price point is the headline, but the numbers behind it tell a more complicated story. The cash flow score is 0, the appreciation score is 8, and the cap rate and cash-on-cash return fields both come back at zero, which signals that the model cannot construct a functioning rental scenario from the available data. The 8.75% year-over-year price decline confirms that appreciation is not a thesis here either. What you have is a county where homes are nearly free by national standards, yet the economics of turning those homes into income-producing assets do not pencil in any conventional sense.

The investor profile this county would theoretically attract is a deep cash-flow buyer chasing yield on ultra-low acquisition costs, but the zero cash flow score tells you the rental demand side of that equation is broken. A population of 2,272 across an entire county is not a tenant pool, it is a small town. At that scale, even a handful of vacant units or one troubled tenant can swing your portfolio materially. Value-add operators face the same wall: you can buy cheap, improve a property, and still have nowhere to place it. Appreciation buyers have no case at all given the 8.75% price decline. The $74,277 median price would be interesting if it sat inside a growing micro-market, but Cimarron County ranks in the 19th percentile nationally and 56th out of 77 Oklahoma counties, which is close to the bottom of the state.

On carry costs, the combined property tax and insurance runs approximately $100 per month, or $1,203 annually, based on Oklahoma's state-average effective property tax rate of 0.90% and an insurance rate of 0.72%. The tax flag is "normal," so there is no particular penalty on that front, and the absolute dollar figures are low given the price point. The caveat the data itself provides is worth repeating: the 0.90% figure is a state-average estimate from the Tax Foundation, and actual Cimarron County or township rates may differ. At a $74,277 purchase price, even modest rate variance does not dramatically change the dollar exposure, but you should pull the county assessor's actual millage before finalizing any underwrite.

No economic anchors or employer data were provided for Cimarron County, so any claim about specific job drivers would be speculation. What the population figure alone conveys is that the local economy is thin. A county of 2,272 people in the Oklahoma Panhandle depends on agricultural activity by geography and history, and that type of economy tends to be seasonal, commodity-price sensitive, and not a generator of stable rental demand from wage-earning tenants. The stability score of 50 is middling rather than alarming, but in a market this small, stability metrics may simply reflect low transaction volume rather than genuine resilience.

The primary risks here are concentration and liquidity, not regulatory or demographic in the typical sense. With a population this small, your tenant universe is extremely narrow, and exit optionality, the ability to sell to another investor or an owner-occupant, is severely limited. A 8.75% price decline in a single year on a median price that was already below $82,000 suggests the market can move against you quickly with very little activity required to set comparable prices. There is no data here on vacancy rates, but a market this thinly populated structurally carries high vacancy risk by definition.

Compared to the neighboring counties provided, Cimarron scores 48 overall against Jackson County at 50, Caddo County at 51, Woods County at 49, and Harper and Kiowa counties both at 45. Cimarron is cheaper than Jackson ($111,908), Woods ($108,519), and Caddo ($97,171), but those counties carry higher scores despite higher prices, which means their rental economics are better, not worse. Harper County at $72,281 and Kiowa County at $66,384 are similarly priced to Cimarron and similarly scored at 45, making none of the three compelling. If you are working the Oklahoma Panhandle and adjacent regions looking for value, Caddo County at a 51 score, or Jackson County at 50, would give you more investable market depth for a modest increase in acquisition cost. Choose Cimarron over its neighbors only if you have a specific off-market deal, an agricultural or owner-financing angle, or a non-traditional use case that the conventional rental model does not capture.