Scottsboro, AL

Scottsboro, Alabama is a decision case with useful cross-source signals but an intentionally incomplete rent-growth record. The supplied market population is 53,053, and the evidence spans pricing, income, employment, construction, resale conditions, migration, mortgage occupancy, and climate-loss exposure. Its central tension is that a current Zillow rent/value snapshot and positive IRS net migration sit beside a BLS employment decline and looser Redfin resale indicators. These measures cover different activity, periods, and populations, so they cannot be combined into a single demand conclusion. Most importantly, Zillow does not publish a trailing-12-month rent change for this market. The 12-month rent change is unavailable; therefore, this report does not assign a score or rank. The relevant question is which unobserved facts—executed lease terms, carrying costs, unit mix, and exposure details—would change the reading of the supplied indicators.

Zillow’s June 30, 2026 observation puts the asking-rent index at $1,313 and the home-value index at $196,415. The supplied gross yield is 8.02%, while the value index is down 0.11% year over year. This is a current price-and-asking-rent relationship, not evidence that rents rose, fell, or held steady over a year; the missing Zillow rent history is why the market remains unranked. The 8.02% figure is a gross rent/value marker, not a reported net result: the packet has no operating-cost, financing, vacancy, tax, insurance, or lease-concession data. Zillow’s stated scope is asking-rent and home-value indexes, distinguishing this evidence from executed leases and closed-sale records. It offers a current asking benchmark and a starting arithmetic relationship, but not the rent-growth evidence needed to judge change.

Affordability has a boundary here, not a settled conclusion. Census ACS reports median household income of $51,908, and the packet’s Zillow rent-to-income measure is 30.34%; its price-to-income measure is 3.78. HUD’s FY2026 two-bedroom Fair Market Rent is $776, whereas Zillow’s asking-rent index is $1,313, a clearly calculated difference of $537 and a supplied ratio of 1.691. Those figures cannot establish rent paid by a particular household, whether an available unit has two bedrooms, or incomes around the median. They do identify a material scope difference between HUD’s two-bedroom FMR benchmark and Zillow’s broad asking-rent index. Lease composition and unit-size comparability remain unresolved rather than yielding a headline affordability label. Census ACS is an income measure; HUD is an FMR benchmark; neither substitutes for a same-unit rent roll or household-specific budget.

Supply and resale evidence offer a different, somewhat cooler, view than a simple rent/value snapshot. BLS LAUS shows metro employment down 0.27% over the 12 months through May 2026. Census Building Permits reports 56 total permits through June 2026, or 1.06 permits per 1,000 residents, with zero in buildings of five or more units. Separately, Redfin’s May 2026 for-sale measures show 6.4 months of supply versus 4.7 previously, median days on market of 66 versus 51, a 97.03% sale-to-list ratio, and price drops at 24.16% versus 21.76%. The inventory, marketing-time, and reduction measures describe for-sale listings; they do not quantify rental vacancy, rent concessions, or units matching Zillow’s index or HUD’s two-bedroom benchmark. The permit total is year-to-date rather than completed housing, and zero five-or-more-unit permits does not identify rental supply from smaller buildings. The evidence records weaker employment and softer resale conditions without demonstrating a rent path.

IRS and HMDA add demand-side context, but their definitions prevent a broad buyer or tenant conclusion. IRS county-to-county tax-return migration aggregated to the market records 1,222 movers in and 962 out, for net migration of 260. The supplied AGI associated with inbound filers is $55,341, compared with $49,306 outbound, a supplied gap of $6,035. This migration measure sits in tension with the BLS employment change rather than resolving it, because neither series states why people moved, their housing tenure, or timing within the market. HMDA’s 2024 purchase-mortgage occupancy evidence counts 473 purchases, including 28 investor purchases, for a 5.92% investor share. That share identifies the investor component of the HMDA purchase-mortgage record, not an all-sales investor share or a measure of rental demand. These participation signals need to remain separate from Zillow asking rents and Redfin resale inventory.

Risk is present in the evidence but cannot be converted here into a location-specific cost. FEMA’s National Risk Index expected-annual-loss evidence names inland flood as the top hazard, with hazard type water, a National Risk Index score of 79, and a climate-loss ratio of 0.001762. These are market-level risk markers, not a statement that any given home, rental unit, or street has a particular exposure or insurance bill. The only supplied cost-level anchors are Zillow’s $1,313 asking-rent index and HUD’s $776 two-bedroom FMR; no insurance premium, tax, maintenance, utility, mitigation, or repair-cost evidence is supplied. That absence matters because Zillow’s 8.02% measure is gross. FEMA, Zillow, and HUD frame a risk-and-cost boundary, but they do not permit a net-income calculation or a property-specific affordability conclusion.

Taken together, the packet supports a disciplined unresolved-case reading. Zillow supplies current rent/value arithmetic but no rent-growth history; Census ACS and HUD show that the income and FMR references differ from the asking-rent index; BLS, Census Building Permits, and Redfin separate employment, permitted construction, and resale conditions; IRS and HMDA describe migration and mortgage occupancy; FEMA identifies a market-level hazard signal. The remaining factual questions are whether executed rents, lease terms, vacancy, concessions, unit sizes, operating costs, and location-specific risk costs align with the index-based picture. Another is whether Redfin inventory and marketing-time changes are confined to resale or coincide with rental availability, because the packet does not link them. A further question is whether IRS migration is reflected in the relevant housing tenure, given HMDA’s narrower purchase-mortgage coverage. Until those questions have evidence, the defensible reading treats the 8.02% gross yield, 30.34% rent-to-income measure, positive net migration, employment decline, and FEMA markers as separate constraints rather than a forecast, market ranking, or property conclusion.