Marshall County

Marshall County, South Dakota sits at a median home price of $241,900, up 9.1% year-over-year, with an affordability index of 78 out of 100. The tool scores it 82 on appreciation and 78 on affordability, but 0 on cash flow, which is the single most important number on this page. The cap rate and cash-on-cash return both come back at zero, meaning the model cannot construct a cash-flowing scenario at the current purchase price with financing at 6.85%. That is not a data gap worth explaining away; it is the market telling you something directly. This is an appreciation play, not an income play, and underwriting it any other way requires assumptions the data does not support.

That appreciation score of 82, combined with a national percentile rank of 82nd out of 1,000 counties analyzed, suggests Marshall is outperforming most of the country on price trajectory. A 9.1% annual gain on a $241,900 asset is roughly $22,000 in equity movement in a single year, which is the real return thesis here. For an appreciation buyer willing to accept neutral or slightly negative monthly cash flow in exchange for equity accumulation, Marshall offers a relatively low entry price compared to many appreciation-driven markets nationally. The affordability index of 78 means the market has not yet priced out the median local renter or buyer, which matters for eventual exit liquidity. For a cash-flow buyer who needs the property to carry itself from day one, this market, as the score of 0 confirms, does not fit the mandate.

The stability score of 50 is worth sitting with. It sits at the midpoint, neither a distressed market nor a supply-constrained growth corridor. Marshall County has a population of 4,363, which means the tenant pool is thin by any urban standard. A single large employer reducing headcount, a seasonal shift in agricultural demand, or modest outmigration can meaningfully move vacancy in a county this size. No economic anchors were provided for this county, so there is no named employer base to underwrite against. That absence is itself a signal: this is not a market where a hospital system, university, or manufacturing plant is providing a visible floor under rental demand. Investors need to be clear-eyed that in a market of 4,363 people, concentration risk is structural, not exceptional.

On carry costs, the combined monthly tax and insurance figure is $331, based on a state-average effective property tax rate of 1.28% and an insurance rate of 0.36%, applied to the $241,900 purchase price. That works out to $3,096 annually in property taxes and $871 in insurance. The 1.28% rate is flagged as normal, so it is neither a tailwind nor a meaningful drag relative to other markets, but at $331 per month it is still a real line on the underwrite that compounds the difficulty of achieving positive cash flow when the cap rate is already at zero. The stated rate is a state-average estimate from Tax Foundation 2024 data, and county or township rates in Marshall may differ materially, so pulling the actual assessor data before closing is not optional.

The regulatory and demographic risks here are largely a function of scale. A population under 5,000 limits the depth of the rental market, limits the number of qualified tenants competing for any given unit, and limits buyer demand at exit if you need to sell to another investor or owner-occupant. There is no vacancy or crime data in the dataset to quantify those risks further, but the population number alone warrants pricing in a conservative vacancy assumption and maintaining an operating reserve larger than you would carry in a 50,000-person metro.

Against its neighbors, Marshall at $241,900 is priced comparably to Davison County ($241,475, overall score 69) and meaningfully below Lake County ($302,351, score 70) and McCook County ($274,393, score 71). Brule County comes in at $232,780 with an identical overall score of 71, and Harding County is the cheapest of the group at $211,924 with the highest score at 72. Marshall's case over a neighbor like Lake County is purely price-based entry; you are buying 9.1% appreciation momentum at $60,000 less than Lake County's median. The case for choosing Marshall over Harding County is less obvious given Harding's lower price and higher score. An investor should choose Marshall specifically when they have local knowledge of the tenant base or specific assets that justify the appreciation thesis, and when they are not dependent on monthly cash flow to service their portfolio.