Pleasants County presents a tension between measured home-value gains and weakening local-demand indicators. Investors able to verify tenant demand, resale depth and flood costs should investigate; those dependent on a broad renter base or rapid exit should be cautious. Zillow’s county median home value was $169,512 in 2026-06, a 2.49% year-over-year gain. This is a value estimate, not a closed-sale price.
Housing economics remain ununderwritten because median asking market rent is not published. HUD’s $869 two-bedroom Fair Market Rent is a payment standard, not asking rent, so gross yield cannot be computed or inferred. The effective property-tax rate was 0.54%, a known carrying-cost input, though the record does not provide insurance. FHFA’s 2025 repeat-transaction HPI rose 7.97% annually. It corroborates Zillow’s positive direction but is neither a home value nor a growth rate to average with Zillow because the methods and vintages differ.
The QCEW series reports annual covered employment at county workplaces, not resident employment or unemployment. Covered employment declined 9.14%, while the average covered-worker weekly wage was $1,185, down 3.50%. Manufacturing, the largest disclosed private supersector, comprised 31.56% of private covered employment, making it material to the covered-job base. Tax-return migration showed a net loss of 75 households; moving-in households had average AGI $1,574 above movers leaving. The income gap softens neither the outflow nor the absence of evidence on renters, and these measures do not establish tenant demand.
Measured buyer competition was slight: the reported investor share was 0% across 38 purchases, but that narrow non-occupant mortgage measure does not describe all buyers. Inland flood is the dominant hazard, and the modeled climate-loss ratio is 0.43% of building value expected annually; it is not a property-specific loss estimate. Published Realtor.com MLS listing price, active supply, days on market, reduction share and pending data are absent, preventing a listing-market supply or marketing-time conclusion. Next checks are market-rent comps, subject-level flood and insurance quotes, property condition, and transaction-level resale evidence.