Moore County

Moore County, Tennessee sits at a median home price of $360,129 with 10.3% year-over-year appreciation, which immediately tells you where this market lives on the spectrum: this is an appreciation play, not a cash-flow machine. The cash-flow score is 0, and the investment estimate fields for cap rate, cash-on-cash return, and monthly cash flow all come back at zero, meaning the rent-to-price relationship here does not pencil for income-focused buyers at current prices. The affordability index of 53 confirms that the median home is already a stretch relative to local incomes, and with a $360,000 entry point in a county of 6,558 people, you are buying into a market that has run hard. The overall score of 63, landing in the 62nd national percentile and ranked 22nd out of 95 Tennessee counties, reflects a market with real appreciation momentum but limited near-term income production.

The buyer this market suits is a long-horizon appreciation investor who can carry a property without requiring rent to cover the mortgage. If your underwriting depends on day-one positive cash flow, Moore County will disappoint you at a $360,000 purchase price and a 6.85% interest rate. The stability score of 50 adds a caution flag: this is not a low-volatility, slow-growth market that cushions downside. The appreciation score of 79 is the draw, and a buyer with equity to deploy, low leverage, or a portfolio strategy that tolerates carry costs in exchange for price growth is the right fit. Value-add operators should proceed carefully given the entry price and the absence of any demonstrated rent premium that justifies renovation spend at this price point.

Moore County is the home of the Jack Daniel's Distillery in Lynchburg, a nationally recognized economic anchor that drives steady tourism traffic to a county with fewer than 7,000 residents. That economic concentration is the defining feature of the local demand story. Tourism and distillery employment provide a base of worker demand, but it is a narrow base. Rental demand in a county this small and this economically concentrated is unlikely to replicate the depth you find in a county anchored by a university, a hospital system, or a diversified manufacturing sector. Stability of 50 reflects exactly that: the employer base is real, but singular.

On carry costs, the combined monthly tax and insurance load runs $321, using Tennessee's 0.71% state-average effective property tax rate and a 0.36% insurance rate. That is a state-average estimate, and as the data notes, actual county and township rates in Moore County may differ. At 0.71%, the tax rate falls in the normal range, so it is not the underwriting hurdle you would face in Illinois or New Jersey, but at a $360,000 purchase price the $2,557 annual tax bill is a real number that sits alongside a $1,296 annual insurance premium. Combined, those two line items consume $321 per month before you account for mortgage, maintenance, or vacancy. At 6.85% on a 20% down loan, the mortgage payment on $288,103 is roughly $1,890. Any investor modeling this deal needs rent north of $2,400 to approach breakeven before repairs, which is a significant ask in a rural county with a population under 7,000.

The primary risks here are concentration and scale. A single economic anchor in a county this small means that anything that disrupts distillery operations, tourism patterns, or the broader whiskey market has outsized effects on local employment and rental demand. There is no secondary employer base named in the data to absorb that shock. The small population also limits your exit options: buyer pools are thin, days-on-market can be long when sentiment shifts, and the 10.3% appreciation figure, while compelling, reflects a market that can move sharply in both directions when the number of transactions is low.

Compared to the neighboring counties in the data, Moore is the highest-priced market by a significant margin at $360,129, while Carroll County sits at $180,314 and Greene County at $240,638. The neighbors that report rent-to-price ratios tell a clear story: Anderson County shows 0.064, Greene County 0.065, Shelby County 0.076, and Madison County 0.075, all of which produce better income yield relative to purchase price than Moore does at current levels. An investor whose primary objective is cash flow should be looking at Shelby or Madison County, where the rent-to-price ratios are 50% to 75% better and entry prices are $140,000 to $145,000 lower. Moore County makes sense over a neighbor only when the investor's thesis is pure appreciation, specifically the continued run-up tied to the distillery's tourism draw and the scarcity of inventory in a very small rural county. If that thesis is wrong, or if holding costs become unmanageable, the alternatives in this data set offer considerably more margin for error.