Lincoln County

Lincoln County, Washington sits at a median home price of $325,182 with home values down a modest 0.55% year-over-year. The cash flow score is 0 and the cap rate is listed at 0, which means the dataset does not produce a rent estimate for this county, making it impossible to calculate a price-to-rent ratio or underwrite a yield with confidence. What the data does tell you is that this is a small, rural market of 11,036 people, ranked 560th out of 1,000 counties nationally and in the 28th percentile overall. The affordability index of 60 and a median price just above $325,000 suggest the entry point is lower than many Washington markets, but without a supportable rent figure, the cash-flow math simply cannot be closed from the available data.

That missing rent figure is the central underwriting problem here. A cash-flow buyer needs a rent estimate to model debt service coverage, and at 6.85% on a $325,182 purchase with 20% down, the monthly mortgage alone on the $260,146 financed balance is roughly $1,706. Add the $323 monthly tax and insurance figure from the provided data and your minimum monthly carry before maintenance, vacancy, or management is pushing $2,030. Without knowing what the market will bear in rent, you cannot determine whether any spread exists. An appreciation buyer faces a different problem: prices are slightly negative on a trailing twelve-month basis, so there is no near-term price momentum to lean on either. The county scores a 47 on appreciation and a 50 on stability, both below what you would want to anchor a pure appreciation thesis. Value-add operators who can source off-market assets and force appreciation through renovation might find the low entry price useful, but they would need local rent comps from a property manager before committing capital.

No economic anchors are provided for Lincoln County, so this analysis cannot speak to employer concentration, job stability, or what is driving rental demand in the area. For a county of just over 11,000 people, that gap matters more than it would in a larger metro. Rural eastern Washington markets of this size often depend on agriculture and public-sector employment, but attributing those drivers here without supporting data would be speculation. Any investor evaluating Lincoln County seriously should supplement this dataset with local vacancy surveys and conversations with property managers in Davenport or the surrounding towns before drawing conclusions about demand depth.

On carry costs, the state-average effective property tax rate of 0.98% is flagged as normal, meaning it does not represent a meaningful tailwind or headwind relative to the national baseline. At that rate, the annual tax bill on a $325,182 asset runs approximately $3,187, and combined with the $683 annual insurance estimate, you are looking at $323 per month in tax and insurance alone. That is a real number in the context of a rural market where rents may not be particularly high, and it deserves a dedicated line in your underwrite rather than being folded into a generic expense ratio. The caveat that this is a state-average estimate is worth taking seriously: county and township rates in Washington can diverge meaningfully from the statewide figure, so pulling the actual Lincoln County assessor rate before finalizing any model is essential.

The most concrete risk here is size. A county with 11,036 residents offers a thin tenant pool, limited liquidity when you need to exit, and meaningful sensitivity to any single employer slowdown or demographic shift. If your property sits vacant for two or three months in a small market, you are unlikely to find a deep queue of qualified applicants. Regulatory risk is not flagged by the data, but Washington state's landlord-tenant framework has generally trended toward tenant protections in recent legislative sessions, which is a background condition worth monitoring regardless of county.

Compared to the neighboring counties provided, Lincoln undercuts all of them on price but cannot demonstrate a yield advantage because no rent figure is available. Douglas County at $476,828 median and a 0.573% monthly rent-to-price ratio and Grant County at $354,439 with a 0.519% ratio both have enough data to actually run a cash-flow model. Franklin County at $412,248 and a 0.545% ratio similarly supports a full underwrite. Yakima at $345,061 and Lewis at $422,453 round out the comparison set, both with visible rent-to-price ratios in the 0.045 to 0.046 range. If you are choosing between Lincoln and any of these neighbors, the neighbors win on analytical clarity alone. Grant County in particular offers a median price only about $29,000 higher than Lincoln while delivering a documentable rent-to-price ratio, making it the more actionable alternative for a buyer who needs to close a cash-flow model. Choose Lincoln over these neighbors only if you have a specific off-market deal with known local rents that justifies underwriting the county's illiquidity premium.