Wayne County presents a price-and-income underwriting tension: Zillow’s county median home value is $134,574, up 2.02% year over year, but no market rent is published. Gross yield therefore cannot be computed. Investors able to collect unit-level rents, tax bills and flood information should investigate; cash-flow buyers relying on county averages should be cautious because the price signal is not an income signal.
HUD’s two-bedroom Fair Market Rent is $888 per month, a payment standard rather than measured asking rent, and cannot be used to infer rent or yield. The effective property-tax rate is 0.52%, and median annual tax is $563; both help screen carrying costs but do not replace a parcel assessment. QCEW annual workplace data show covered employment down 0.04%, with a $766 average weekly covered-worker wage. Education and health services is the largest disclosed private supersector, not a description of the whole county economy.
Realtor.com’s MLS evidence is mixed: 43 active listings had a 60-day median marketing time, while the pending-to-active ratio was 22.35% and 3.92% of listings had price reductions. These describe visible supply, listing pipeline and seller concessions, not closed prices or buyer demand by themselves. Migration adds a modest counterpoint: net migration was 45 tax-return households, and arriving movers had average AGI $2,684 higher than departing movers. Investors made 16 of 106 purchases, indicating non-owner participation but within a limited purchase count.
Inland flood is the dominant hazard, and modeled annual climate loss equals 0.41% of building value; this requires parcel-level flood-zone, insurance, elevation and repair-history review rather than county averaging. Market-rent, vacancy, insurance-quote, closed-sale and transaction-volume evidence are not published here, preventing a defensible cash-flow, expense or resale-liquidity conclusion. FHFA’s repeat-transaction HPI is also not published, so it cannot independently confirm or challenge Zillow’s direction. County-wide data cannot establish a specific property’s condition, tenant quality or hazard exposure.