In North Tonawanda, Zillow’s current typical city ZHVI is $291,026 and its typical observed city ZORI is $1,172.50 a month. That produces a 4.8% gross yield before operating costs. Relative to city ACS median household income, the ZHVI is 4.35x income and annual ZORI is 21.0% of income. These are market-level affordability screens, rather than estimates of a buyer’s payment or a property’s cash flow.
The city has 14,710 housing units; renters occupy 29.9% of occupied units. Single-family properties account for 68.2% of all units, while large multifamily buildings account for 5.5%, creating a predominantly smaller-scale stock. The ACS survey reports a $197,200 median owner-reported home value and $934 median gross rent, which includes selected utilities. Those ACS occupied-housing measures differ in method and period from Zillow’s current city ZHVI and ZORI, so they should not be blended or treated as an appraisal.
City renter-burden context is material: 50.7% of renters pay at least 30% of income toward rent. Of vacant housing units, ACS counts 198 for rent, 32 for sale, and 40 seasonal; these vacancy-reason counts are housing-stock context, not an inventory of properties available to an investor. Population is 30,198, a 0.9% decrease from the overlapping ACS baseline; this is not annualized and may reflect survey or boundary differences. Median household income is $66,961; poverty is 12.4% and unemployment is 5.8%. These describe demand constraints but cannot establish renter quality, lease-up speed, or causality.
Niagara County has a 2.2% county property-tax rate, a cost benchmark that does not measure an individual North Tonawanda parcel. The broader Buffalo metro has 2.6 months of supply, a market-wide listing condition rather than city inventory. The national 30-year mortgage rate is 6.7%, a financing benchmark that can affect payments but is not a city lending quote.
Underwriting remains limited by city-level typical values and rents, survey-based ACS measures, and broader county, metro, and national benchmarks that cannot price a specific asset. Before a decision, verify the address’s taxes and assessments, insurance and hazard exposure, utilities, condition and age-related capital needs, zoning and permits, lease terms, tenant payment history, comparable executed rents, vacancy, and all operating costs. Recalculate yield from actual income and expenses rather than the gross city screen.