Mountain Home, AR

Mountain Home, AR’s metropolitan or micropolitan statistical area has a population of 42,407 in the supplied record, alongside a Zillow asking-rent level of $1,200 and a Zillow home-value level of $235,970 at 2026-06-30. Those are useful current reference points, but they do not create a rent-momentum result. Zillow does not provide a trailing-12-month rent change in this packet. Because the 12-month rent change is unavailable, this report assigns no score and no rank; the market is intentionally unranked. The decision frame is therefore evidentiary rather than directional: it identifies what the current rent/value relationship, household-income benchmarks, labor and housing indicators, migration and mortgage-occupancy data, and climate-loss evidence do and do not establish. A renter, landlord, or small investor faces different questions within that record, but none substitutes for the missing Zillow rent-history comparison.

Zillow’s indexes at 2026-06-30 put asking rent at $1,200 and home value at $235,970. The home-value reading was 0.87% above its prior-year reading, whereas no matching trailing-12-month rent movement can be calculated. The supplied gross yield is 6.1%, a market-level rent/value ratio based on the supplied measures. It is a gross relationship, not a net-income calculation: the packet has no operating-cost, vacancy, financing, or lease-collection series. Nor do the two Zillow indexes identify the same unit or a transaction price and rent. The key tension is not a contradiction in current levels; it is that value has a stated year-over-year movement while rent has only a current asking-rent observation. That asymmetry precludes a rent-growth reading despite the useful level and yield context.

Census ACS reports median household income of $48,452. Against that denominator, the packet gives a rent-to-income ratio of 29.72% and a price-to-income ratio of 4.87. HUD’s FY2026 two-bedroom Fair Market Rent is $964, compared with Zillow’s $1,200 asking-rent index. The Zillow level is $236 higher, a difference calculated from supplied figures, and the supplied rent-to-FMR ratio is 1.245. This is an affordability boundary, not a burden finding: Census ACS is an income measure, HUD FMR is an administrative rental benchmark, and Zillow is an asking-rent index. The packet does not show paid rents, household-size matching, or the distribution of income and housing costs. Accordingly, the comparison defines a useful market-level spread but does not establish affordability for a particular household.

Labor, permits, and resale indicators add breadth but remain noninterchangeable. BLS LAUS shows metro jobs up 2.37% in the 12 months to 2026-05. Census Building Permits Survey reports 90 permitted units in 2026 YTD through M06, or 2.12 per 1,000 residents, with zero in the 5+ category. Permits are not completions, rental tenure, or occupied units. Redfin’s 2026-05-01 for-sale snapshot shows 5.6 months of supply, up from 4.4, while median days on market were 50, down from 54. Its sale-to-list ratio was 98.06%, and the price-drop share was 19.17%, below 26.73% in the prior reading by a computed 7.56 percentage points. Higher for-sale months of supply alongside faster marketing and fewer price drops is a mixed sales reading. It neither measures lease inventory nor resolves whether the labor and permit data map to current rental availability.

IRS county-to-county tax-return migration, aggregated to the market, reports 1,251 moves in and 1,046 moves out, for the supplied net migration of 205. The inbound AGI measure is $55,936 and the outbound measure is $50,726, producing the supplied $5,210 gap. These figures describe the direction and AGI composition of recorded tax-return flows, not lease signings or the tenure of movers. HMDA adds a distinct 2024 mortgage-occupancy lens: of 552 purchases, 87 are investor purchases, a 15.76% investor share. That is direct evidence of investor participation within the HMDA purchase set. It is not a count of the rental stock, all purchases, or the cash segment. The IRS flow and HMDA share can coexist with several forms of housing use, so neither source by itself establishes rental demand, investor pricing, or the destination of migrants.

FEMA’s National Risk Index provides expected annual loss evidence at the market scale: climate loss ratio is 0.001693, the NRI risk score is 72.3, and the identified top hazard is inland flood, a water hazard. The packet supplies no FEMA score scale, location-specific exposure, insurance premium, or loss allocation, so these measures cannot price a given housing expense. Available cost-level evidence is also partial. Zillow provides the $1,200 asking-rent and $235,970 home-value levels; HUD provides the $964 two-bedroom FMR; Census ACS provides the $48,452 median household-income measure. The 6.1% gross yield expresses rent relative to value, not a net return. No property tax, maintenance, utility, financing, or flood-insurance cost is supplied. FEMA risk and the available price, rent, and income benchmarks therefore identify a cost-information boundary rather than a complete cost ledger.

Taken together, the record contains cross-source tensions rather than a single directional message. BLS job change and IRS net migration are measures of labor and tax-return flows, while Redfin indicates more for-sale months of supply, and Census Building Permits supplies only permit counts. Zillow shows a current rent/value relationship and a price change, but not rent momentum; HMDA shows investor participation only within purchase mortgages; FEMA provides market-scale risk evidence without asset costs. The due-diligence questions left open are whether asking rents match signed leases, how permitted units and resale inventory translate into available rentals, what occupancy mix lies outside HMDA, and what exposure-specific costs accompany the FEMA signal. A consistently dated Zillow rent history would be needed for the omitted 12-month calculation. Until such evidence is present, no source in this packet resolves those questions or supports a score, rank, forward rent view, or property-specific conclusion.