Hillsdale, MI

Hillsdale, MI is reviewed here as an evidence-rich but intentionally unranked market with a population of 45,654. The decision frame is not whether it belongs above or below another market: Zillow does not publish enough history to calculate a trailing-12-month rent change. That measure is unavailable, so this report assigns no score or rank. The packet nevertheless provides current rent and home-value levels alongside income, labor, construction, resale, migration, mortgage-occupancy, and hazard evidence. These measures cover different populations, definitions, and dates; none independently establishes rental performance. The central issue for a renter, landlord, or small investor is whether the current Zillow rent level, household-income reference, labor reading, and resale conditions can be reconciled before the headline rent or gross-yield figure is treated as decisive.

Zillow's asking-rent and home-value indexes place rent at $1,325 and home value at $217,605 as of 2026-06-30. The supplied gross yield is 7.31%, a relationship between the current rent and value levels rather than evidence of realized net income. The packet contains no expense, vacancy, concession, financing, or lease-renewal figures with which to convert that gross figure into a property operating result. Zillow also shows a 7.84% year-over-year home-value increase, but price movement cannot substitute for an unreported rent trend. The absence of a trailing-12-month Zillow rent change is therefore material: a current asking-rent level and a positive home-value change can coexist without establishing whether asking rents were rising, flat, or falling over the required period. Zillow's index evidence is useful for the current level comparison, not for assigning a rent-growth score.

Census ACS reports median household income of $64,242, and the supplied Zillow rent-to-income ratio is 24.75%. Zillow home value is 3.39 times that income measure. HUD's FY2026 two-bedroom Fair Market Rent is $1,002. The Zillow asking-rent level is therefore $323 above the HUD benchmark, or 32.2% higher under the supplied rent-versus-FMR ratio. These are not interchangeable affordability measures: Census ACS provides a household-income reference, HUD provides an administrative two-bedroom rent benchmark, and Zillow provides an asking-rent index. The comparison identifies a boundary worth testing, but it does not establish the rent burden of any household, the unit mix represented by Zillow's index, or whether the HUD benchmark describes the available asking-rent inventory.

BLS LAUS reports a 4.03% year-over-year decline in metro employment for the 12 months through 2026-05. Census Building Permits Survey data show 122 permitted housing units in 2026 year to date through M06, or 2.67 per thousand residents, with zero permits in structures containing five or more units and zero percent of the total in that category. Those are permit records, not completions or rental occupancy. Redfin's 2026-05-01 for-sale snapshot shows 3.8 months of supply versus 2.6 previously, a 1.2-month increase, while median days on market rose to 63 from 49, a 14-day increase. The sale-to-list ratio is 97.09%, and price drops are 23.49% versus 23.08%, a 0.41-percentage-point increase. Redfin describes a changed resale setting, but it does not measure rental demand or demonstrate that the BLS or permit readings produced that change.

IRS county-to-county tax-return migration aggregated to Hillsdale records 982 moved-in returns and 1,049 moved-out returns, for net migration of -67. At the same time, adjusted gross income associated with inbound returns is $55,272 versus $50,854 for outbound returns, a supplied gap of $4,418. The count and income figures describe different dimensions of migration: net movement is negative by count, while the inbound income figure exceeds the outbound figure. HMDA adds a separate mortgage-occupancy view for 2024, when 31 of 420 purchase mortgages were identified as investor purchases, a 7.38% investor share. IRS is tax-return migration evidence and HMDA is purchase-mortgage occupancy evidence; neither is a census of current tenants, rental ownership, or all purchases. Their distinct dates and scopes prevent either source from establishing the present direction of rental demand or investor influence on rent.

FEMA's National Risk Index supplies expected annual loss evidence rather than a site-specific loss estimate. The climate loss ratio is 0.000951, the National Risk Index score is 50, and the listed top hazard is inland flood within the water hazard type. Those figures put a documented risk screen alongside the market data, but they do not identify exposure for a particular address, building, tenant, or loan. The available cost-level evidence is narrow: Zillow supplies current asking rent and home value, while HUD supplies the two-bedroom Fair Market Rent benchmark. No insurance, tax, repair, mitigation, or loss-cost figure is included. Consequently, the FEMA ratio and risk score cannot be translated from this packet into an operating expense, rent adjustment, or home-value effect.

The practical due-diligence synthesis is to preserve the distinctions that the data create. The first unresolved item is a dated asking-rent and lease-rent record sufficient to replace the missing Zillow trailing-12-month change. The second is the connection, if any, between BLS employment change, Census Building Permits supply, and Redfin's for-sale inventory and marketing-time measures; the packet does not demonstrate that these series describe the same segment. The third is composition: IRS migration counts and adjusted gross income should remain separate from HMDA's 2024 mortgage-occupancy evidence. Finally, FEMA's market-level hazard signal requires separate exposure and cost documentation before it can inform a location-specific decision. Hillsdale remains unscored and unranked because the specified Zillow rent-history input is unavailable, not because the other evidence can validly be combined into a substitute rank.