Sullivan County

Sullivan County's headline number is a median home price of $219,494, up 7.84% year-over-year, against a cash-flow score of 0 and a cap rate of 0 in the provided data. That combination tells you almost everything: this is a pure appreciation play. The tool has not modeled a reliable rent-to-price ratio here, which itself signals a thin or opaque rental market. The appreciation score of 95 out of 100 and a national ranking of 14th out of 1,000 counties place Sullivan in the 98th percentile nationally for price growth dynamics, yet the cash-flow score bottoms out. Investors who need their property to service debt from rental income will find no support in these numbers. Investors who are buying for land value, recreational demand, or long-run price appreciation are looking at one of the sharpest-appreciating rural markets in Pennsylvania.

The investor profile this market suits is narrow but specific: a cash-buyer or low-leverage buyer who can carry the asset without relying on rental income, and who believes the 7.84% annual price appreciation trend continues. An affordability index of 83 means the market is not cheap relative to local incomes, which limits the owner-occupant buyer pool and, by extension, the eventual exit market. A value-add operator looking to force equity through renovation and then rent at market rates will struggle without a visible rent ceiling to underwrite against. The appreciation buyer, by contrast, can point to a state rank of 2nd out of 67 Pennsylvania counties as evidence that Sullivan is not a sleepy rural outlier, it is outperforming nearly every other county in the state on price trajectory. That said, appreciation at this pace in a county of 5,880 people deserves healthy skepticism about liquidity at exit.

Sullivan County has a population of 5,880, making it one of the smallest counties in Pennsylvania by headcount. No economic anchors were provided in the underlying data, so this analysis will not speculate about employers or industry concentrations. What the population figure alone implies is that the rental demand pool is thin. A landlord with two or three vacant units in a county this size is not competing against an active rental market, they are waiting for a very small universe of tenants to show up. That dynamic makes Sullivan unsuitable as a buy-and-hold cash-flow rental market in the traditional sense, and it reinforces the read that whatever is driving price appreciation here is likely driven by second-home demand, recreational buyers, or land scarcity rather than wage-earning renters needing housing.

The tax and insurance carry costs deserve a careful look. At a state-average effective property tax rate of 1.54%, Pennsylvania sits in the high tier, and the data flags it accordingly. On a $219,494 purchase, that translates to $3,380 in annual property taxes and $505 in annual insurance, totaling $324 per month in combined tax and insurance before you touch mortgage, maintenance, or vacancy. That $324 monthly figure is a real underwriting line item, not a rounding error. At 1.54%, this rate is high enough to deserve its own line on your underwrite, and the honest caveat here is that this is a state-average estimate from the Tax Foundation's 2024 data; the actual county or township rate in Sullivan may differ, in either direction. If you are carrying this asset with leverage at 6.85% on a $175,595 loan after 20% down, the mortgage principal and interest alone adds roughly another $1,150 per month before expenses, and with no cap rate modeled, there is no rental income cushion in the data to offset that load.

The principal risk in Sullivan is concentration, specifically the concentration of everything into one thesis: that prices keep rising in a very small, likely amenity-driven market. A 5,880-person county has no economic diversification to speak of from what the data reveals, no large employer base to anchor rental demand, and an affordability index of 83 suggesting the market is already somewhat stretched relative to local incomes. If recreational or second-home buyer demand softens, a county this size has no natural floor of local rental demand to absorb the slack. Regulatory risk is not quantified in the data and will not be assumed, but small rural counties in Pennsylvania can have idiosyncratic zoning and land use rules that are worth verifying before committing capital.

Compared to its neighbors, Sullivan sits at a higher price point than Cameron ($70,313), Elk ($139,617), Indiana ($158,787), and Schuylkill ($155,809) counties, and nearly matches Susquehanna ($224,876). The neighbors where rent-to-price ratios are available tell a different story: Indiana County carries a gross rent multiplier equivalent to a 10.4% annual rent-to-price ratio and an overall score of 80, while Schuylkill shows 8.8% at a score of 77. Both counties offer substantially more cash-flow runway than Sullivan's zero modeled return, at purchase prices $60,000 to $80,000 lower. If your mandate is cash-flow or even a blend of cash-flow and appreciation, Indiana County's 10.4% rent-to-price ratio with a lower basis is the more straightforward underwrite. Choose Sullivan over those neighbors only if you have specific conviction in the appreciation thesis, can carry the asset without rental income covering costs, and are comfortable with the liquidity constraints of a sub-6,000-person county market.