Fort Morgan, CO

Fort Morgan, CO presents a decision problem rather than a market call. The supplied population is 29,520, and the evidence is drawn from separate market-wide series that answer different questions for a renter, landlord, or small investor. Zillow provides asking-rent and home-value indexes; Census ACS supplies household-income context; HUD supplies a Fair Market Rent benchmark. BLS, Census Building Permits, Redfin, FEMA, IRS, and HMDA fill in labor, construction, resale, risk, migration, and mortgage-occupancy evidence. The periods are not identical, so the record is a cross-source snapshot, not a synchronized reading. Crucially, Zillow does not publish a trailing-12-month rent change here. That change is unavailable; therefore this report assigns no score and no rank.

At 2026-06-30, Zillow’s asking-rent index is $1,344 and its home-value index is $334,065. The supplied home-value year-over-year field is 0.0004, while the supplied gross-yield field is 0.0483. Those figures place current asking rent, value, and the packet’s yield screen side by side, but they do not show whether a particular lease was signed at the index, whether a unit was vacant, or what operating costs were incurred. The limiting item is temporal: the rent index has a stated level but no available 12-month change. The home-value change field cannot substitute for rent history, and a gross-yield field cannot establish a net outcome. Zillow is consequently useful for current rent/value economics only, not rent momentum or a ranking.

Affordability has a clear measurement boundary. Census ACS reports median household income of $73,278, alongside supplied rent-to-income and price-to-income measures of 0.22 and 4.56. HUD’s FY2026 two-bedroom Fair Market Rent is $1,160. Zillow’s $1,344 asking-rent index is a computed $184 higher than that HUD figure, and the supplied rent-versus-FMR measure is 1.158. This is not a contradiction: an asking-rent index, a Fair Market Rent benchmark, median income, and ratio fields are distinct constructs. Nor can the comparison establish actual tenant burden, because the packet does not provide a household’s rent, income, or unit match. It does establish the boundary between advertised rent evidence and HUD and Census reference measures.

Labor, permitted construction, and resale indicators create a mixed reading. BLS LAUS shows a -0.0379 job change over the 12 months to 2026-05. Census Building Permits Survey records 16 permits in 2026 YTD through M06, 0 in the 5-plus category, and 0.54 permits per 1,000 population. Redfin’s 2026-05-01 resale snapshot shows 4.2 months of supply versus 6.5 prior, and a median 50 days on market versus 65 prior: computed differences of 2.3 months and 15 days. Yet Redfin also reports a 0.97 sale-to-list ratio and price drops of 0.3237 versus 0.2222 prior, a computed increase of 0.1015. BLS is labor evidence, permits are newly permitted supply, and Redfin is for-sale evidence; none directly measures rental vacancies, completions, or lease concessions.

Demand evidence is similarly qualified rather than uniform. The IRS county-to-county tax-return migration series, aggregated to this market, lists 708 moves in and 799 moves out, for net migration of -91. Its reported AGI fields are $51,747 inbound and $53,701 outbound, with an AGI gap of -$1,954. HMDA adds a different lens: in 2024 it records 369 purchase mortgages, including 25 identified as investor purchases, for an investor share of 0.0678. IRS movement fields are not a lease-demand count, and HMDA is purchase-mortgage occupancy evidence rather than a complete record of all housing transactions or rental households. The figures therefore document outward net movement and a measured investor-purchase share, without establishing the motivations, timing, or tenure choices behind either.

Risk is a separate cost and diligence boundary, not a verdict on market direction. FEMA’s National Risk Index identifies inland flood as the top hazard and classifies it as water. The supplied National Risk Index score is 51.9, and the climate loss ratio is 0.001988. FEMA’s expected-annual-loss evidence gives this report a cost-level risk signal, but the packet supplies neither a building-specific loss estimate nor an insurance premium, repair bill, deductible, or mitigation record. No comparison benchmark accompanies the score or ratio. Accordingly, these FEMA values are market-level exposure evidence, while they cannot be converted into the cost of occupying, leasing, or owning any particular home.

The practical synthesis is a sequence of unresolved checks, not an outcome call. Zillow’s current rent/value level, Census ACS income ratios, and HUD’s FMR comparison provide an affordability frame; BLS, Census Building Permits, and Redfin show a labor, permit, and resale picture with indicators moving in different directions; IRS and HMDA limit what can be inferred about demand and investor participation; FEMA identifies a hazard-cost question. For a renter, the missing facts are the relevant current asking terms and any recurring occupancy costs. For a landlord or small investor, the absent facts include property-specific operating expenses, current lease terms, vacancy experience, condition, financing, and flood-related insurance or mitigation records. A market-level conclusion should also reconcile permits with actual completions and Redfin resale conditions with rental availability. Until Zillow publishes sufficient 12-month rent history, the central rent-change test remains unavailable, so Fort Morgan remains intentionally unscored and unranked.