Salem, OH

Salem, OH should be treated as an evidence-rich but deliberately unranked rental-market file, rather than as a market with a missing conclusion. The area has a population of 100,704 and contemporaneous rent, value, income, labor, construction, sales, migration, mortgage-occupancy, and hazard measures. Yet Zillow does not publish enough rent history here to calculate a trailing-12-month rent change. That missing Zillow change is decisive for the ranking method: this report assigns neither a score nor a rank. The decision frame is therefore cross-sectional. It asks whether the current rent/value relationship, affordability measures, supply indicators, labor reading, migration data, investor-participation evidence, and hazard measures agree, conflict, or leave important questions open; it does not convert the available observations into a prediction.

At 2026-06-30, Zillow's asking-rent index is $829 and its home-value index is $166,912. Zillow also reports price_yoy of 0.0359 and a gross_yield of 0.0596. Read together, these figures describe current rent/value economics and a stated value change, but not rent momentum. An asking-rent index is not a record of executed leases, and a home-value index is not a sale-price register; the supplied Zillow scope is specifically asking-rent and home-value indexes. Most importantly, rent_12_month_change_available is false. The value change cannot stand in for the unavailable rent change, and the reported gross yield cannot reveal whether asking rents were accepted, how they vary across units, or what costs sit behind a gross measure. The useful comparison is with the affordability and policy benchmarks below, not a constructed rent trend.

Census ACS places median household income at $58,180 and supplies a rent-to-income ratio of 0.1709 alongside a price-to-income ratio of 2.87. HUD sets the FY2026 two-bedroom Fair Market Rent at $973. Zillow's $829 asking-rent index equals the supplied rent_vs_fmr2 ratio of 0.852; the arithmetic difference between the two dollar figures is $144. This is an affordability boundary, not an equivalence. Census ACS describes household income, HUD's Fair Market Rent is a two-bedroom benchmark, and Zillow measures asking rents. Their definitions and coverage are distinct. The packet therefore permits a comparison of stated levels and ratios, but not a claim about any household's rent burden, voucher use, unit quality, or the rent achieved on a particular lease. The unresolved issue is which rental stock and household group each figure represents.

Supply and sales evidence moves on different clocks. BLS, using LAUS, reports job_yoy of -0.0093 for the 12 months to 2026-05. Census Building Permits Survey reports 46 total permits in 2026 YTD through M06, 0 in the five-plus category, and 0.46 permits per 1,000 residents; permits_pct_5p is 0. Census Building Permits is evidence of new permitted housing supply, not a direct count of completed or available rentals. Redfin's 2026-05-01 for-sale snapshot shows months_supply unchanged at 2.9 from 2.9, median days on market at 42 versus 57 prior, sale_to_list of 0.9553, and price_drops of 0.2723 versus 0.2907 prior. The 15-day reduction in reported marketing time and the 0.0184 decline in the price-drop share coexist with unchanged reported months of supply. Neither that coexistence nor the permits and jobs readings establish why conditions look this way, and Redfin's for-sale measures should not be treated as Zillow rent evidence.

IRS county-to-county tax-return migration, aggregated to this market, records 1,745 inbound and 1,921 outbound, producing net_migration of -176. The reported inbound AGI is $50,874 and outbound AGI is $47,078, a supplied AGI gap of $3,796. These IRS flows describe the tax-return migration measure, not the number of renters seeking leases or the reasons for moving. HMDA adds purchase-mortgage occupancy evidence for 2024: 806 purchases_total, 40 purchases_investor, and investor_share of 0.0496. That investor share identifies the supplied purchase-mortgage participation measure; it does not establish the ownership mix of all homes, rental demand, or investor activity beyond the recorded measure. The tension worth retaining is that the IRS flow is net negative while inbound AGI exceeds outbound AGI in the reported values; the packet does not say how either measure relates to rent formation.

FEMA's National Risk Index contributes a separate constraint: its top named hazard is inland_flood, the hazard type is water, the NRI risk score is 69.1, and the climate_loss_ratio is 0.001047. The packet's direct cost-related evidence stops there. It provides no insurance premium, tax, repair, maintenance, mitigation, or utility-cost figure, and FEMA's market-level hazard and expected-annual-loss evidence does not identify the exposure or expense of any specific property. Consequently, neither the raw loss ratio nor the score can be translated here into a rent adjustment, operating-cost estimate, or investment return. FEMA should remain distinct from Zillow's gross yield: the latter is a reported rent/value measure, while the former is hazard and expected-annual-loss evidence. The needed inquiry concerns the definitions, geography, denominator, and applicable cost records, none of which are supplied.

The practical due-diligence synthesis is a sequence of reconciliations, not a buy, sell, lease, or ranking conclusion. The initial inquiry is the Zillow series: its rent-index coverage, date continuity, and whether sufficient history becomes available for the missing trailing-12-month calculation. That result can then be placed beside the Census ACS income definition and HUD FY2026 two-bedroom Fair Market Rent definition before treating the $144 gap as an affordability finding. Separately, Census Building Permits records, BLS LAUS labor data, and Redfin listing methodology need to remain distinct so that permitted supply, job change, and for-sale conditions are not collapsed into a rental-demand narrative. IRS migration and AGI flows also require reconciliation with the narrower HMDA purchase-mortgage occupancy counts rather than an assumption that they describe the same households. Finally, FEMA's inland-flood designation and loss-ratio definition identify the missing cost documents. These checks can clarify which current signals are comparable; until then, Salem remains intentionally unranked because the Zillow 12-month rent change is unavailable.