Cotton County

Cotton County, Oklahoma sits at a median home price of $108,885, which is among the most affordable entry points you'll find anywhere in the country, scoring a perfect 100 on affordability. The county ranks 402nd out of 1,000 nationally, landing at the 49th percentile overall with a 59 composite score. The cash flow score is listed at zero and cap rate data is absent from the model output, which means the rent-income relationship here could not be reliably estimated from available data. That gap itself is a signal: this is a thin, illiquid market where rental comps are scarce, and any underwrite you build will rest heavily on local legwork rather than aggregated data. Home prices slid 2.79% year-over-year, so you are not buying into price momentum. The appreciation score of 36 confirms this is not a market where equity growth does the heavy lifting.

Given the cash flow score of zero and the absent cap rate, Cotton County does not fit the profile of a straightforward cash-flow buy based on what the model can verify. Appreciation buyers should look at the 36 score and the negative price trend and walk away. The investor who might find a use for this county is the value-add or deep-value operator who is comfortable underwriting blind, willing to do primary research on local rents, and targeting the lowest possible acquisition cost as a margin-of-safety play. At $108,885 median, the absolute dollar exposure is low, which limits downside in dollar terms even if the investment underperforms. But low price alone does not make a deal, and without a verified rent-to-price ratio, the cash-on-cash math cannot be confirmed from the data provided.

No economic anchor data was provided for Cotton County, so employer concentration and job-base composition cannot be assessed here. What the demographic numbers do communicate is scale: a population of 5,537 means this is a very small, likely rural county. Small population bases tend to mean a limited renter pool, slower lease-up when units turn, and fewer comparable sales to support appraisals. Stability scores at 50, which is middling, and in a market this size, that score deserves weight. A single employer departure or population decline of even a few hundred people can meaningfully compress rental demand.

On carry costs, the combined monthly tax and insurance estimate is $147, 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," meaning the rate does not warrant a special flag in either direction, though you should note that 0.90% is a state-average estimate per Tax Foundation 2024 data and actual Cotton County or township-level rates may differ. Oklahoma's insurance costs, reflected in that 0.72% rate, are not trivial given the state's exposure to wind and severe weather, and $784 annually in insurance on a $108,885 asset is a real line item. At that price point, every dollar of fixed cost matters to the yield math, so confirm actual carrier quotes before closing.

The primary risks here are structural rather than regulatory. The small population creates concentration risk in the rental pool: if your target renter demographic shrinks, there is no depth of demand to absorb vacancies. Liquidity risk on exit is real. A market with a median price under $110,000 and limited transaction volume will have a narrow buyer pool when you go to sell, which constrains your exit options to other investors or owner-occupants with financing. No regulatory risk data was provided, so that dimension cannot be assessed.

Compared to the neighboring counties in the dataset, Cotton sits in a cluster of similarly scored markets. Choctaw County carries a 58 overall score with a $133,863 median, and McCurtain County matches Cotton's 59 score at $206,069. Neither provides rent-to-price data, so the cash-flow comparison is incomplete. The two neighbors where rent data is available tell a different story: Oklahoma County scores 61 with a rent-to-price ratio of 0.0711 and a $219,315 median, while McClain County scores 60 with a 0.0618 ratio at $281,639. Oklahoma County's 7.11% gross rent-to-price ratio is a meaningfully better starting point for a cash-flow underwrite than anything this data set can confirm for Cotton, and it comes with a larger renter pool, more liquidity, and presumably a more diversified economic base. Cotton makes sense over a neighbor only if your strategy is strictly lowest-cost entry with full acceptance of the data gaps and illiquidity that come with a 5,500-person county, and even then, the zero cash flow score demands you verify rents on the ground before committing capital.