Urbana’s current Zillow ZHVI is $209,777 and its Zillow ZORI is $1,249 per month, producing a 7.1% gross yield before taxes, insurance, maintenance, management, vacancy, or financing. Price-to-income is 4.6x relative to ACS median household income, while annual Zillow rent equals 33.1% of that income. These are comparison ratios, not a household payment test or an estimate of property cash flow.
Urbana’s ACS portrays a renter-led stock: renters occupy 62.7% of occupied units and the citywide vacancy rate is 12.3%. The ACS median gross rent is $972, including selected utilities, and its $184,900 median home value is owner-reported. Those surveyed occupied-housing measures differ from Zillow’s typical observed market rent and typical home value, including measure construction and period, so they should not be averaged.
Rent pressure is material in the citywide ACS survey, where 58.3% of renter households satisfy the rent-burden measure. Of vacant units, 1,208 were for rent, or 50.9%; 195 were for sale and 32 were seasonal. These shares describe housing-stock status, not leasing speed or available investment inventory. Single-family homes make up 42.6% of all housing units and large multifamily buildings 22.6%; median construction year was 1980. Population was 39,341, down 7.9% from 42,718 across overlapping ACS vintages, a comparison that cannot establish timing or causes and may also reflect boundary changes. Median household income was $45,346; unemployment was 4.7% and poverty was 28.0%, descriptive demand constraints rather than causal evidence.
At the county level, Champaign County’s property-tax rate is 2.058%, a cost input that needs parcel-specific verification. In the broader metro, Champaign, IL, supply was 3.1 months, a market-wide inventory measure rather than a city listing count. The national Freddie Mac mortgage rate was 6.69%, relevant to financing assumptions but not a city borrowing quote.
Key limits are that citywide medians cannot price a specific home, gross yield excludes all operating and capital costs, ACS shares are survey context, and wider figures use different geographies and denominators. Before underwriting, verify the property’s taxes and assessments, insurance and hazard history, condition and capital needs, legal rent and lease terms, utilities, tenant turnover, comparable city rents and sales, financing terms, compliance obligations, utility responsibility, and current seller disclosures.