St. Louis city has an income-versus-exit tension: the reported 8.95% gross yield before costs sits beside a 0.63% year-over-year decline in Zillow’s county home value and softer visible listing conditions. Income-oriented buyers with property-level expense and lease evidence should investigate. Short-hold buyers, and owners unable to independently price flood exposure or operating costs, should be cautious.
At Zillow’s county observation, median home value was $186,876 and median asking rent was $1,394 per month, up 4.99% year over year; the reported yield uses market rent, not HUD data. The effective property-tax rate is 1.03%, but the record does not allocate tax to a target property. HUD’s two-bedroom FMR is $1,218 per month, a payment standard rather than a rent estimate; supplied market rent is 14.4% higher. FHFA’s annual repeat-transaction HPI increased, unlike Zillow’s later decline, but it is an index rather than a home value and cannot be combined with Zillow’s measure.
Realtor.com MLS evidence shows active listings up 12.03%, median listing prices down 5.68%, and 18.69% of listings reduced. These are asking-price, visible-supply, and seller-concession measures—not closed-sale prices or proof of buyer demand alone. Tax-return migration shows a net outflow of 1,371 households, while inbound movers had lower average AGI than outbound movers. Investors accounted for 22.67% of 3,295 purchases, framing meaningful buyer competition but not resale pricing or absorption. QCEW annual data show covered workplace employment fell while covered-worker wages rose; education and health services is the largest disclosed private supersector, not the whole economy.
Inland flood is the dominant hazard, with modeled annual building-value loss of 0.21%; this county-level ratio is not an insurance quote or a site flood determination. The record publishes no vacancy, lease-renewal, property-condition, insurance-premium, flood-zone, debt, or submarket closed-sale evidence. That prevents measurement of net yield, cash flow, replacement-cost exposure, and whether county signals apply to a particular building. Next checks are tax assessment, rent roll and comparable leases, insurance and flood maps, and recent closed sales.