A nine-city Treasure Valley housing baseline: value, rent, ownership, and income

Local listing and transaction data answer important questions, but access, coverage, and methodology can differ by platform. The American Community Survey gives every city the same definitions and survey period, which makes it a useful first comparison across the Valley.

This baseline uses the 2020–2024 ACS five-year estimates displayed in Census QuickFacts. A five-year estimate pools survey responses across the period to improve reliability for smaller places. The tradeoff is timeliness: it should not be described as a July 2026 market price or rent.

Median owner value covers owner-occupied housing units. Median gross rent generally combines contract rent with an estimate of tenant-paid utilities. Median household income covers all households, not only renters or recent buyers. Those universes are related but not interchangeable.

The published owner-value point estimates run from $367,300 in Caldwell and $370,800 in Nampa to $772,900 in Eagle, with the other cities between them. That descriptive ordering is not a statistical ranking: QuickFacts does not place margins of error beside these tiles, and apparent differences can be uncertain. The spread also reflects differences in housing stock, lot and home size, construction vintage, tenure, location, and the households represented in the survey.

Median owner value is not the same measure as a median sale price. It includes owner-reported values for homes that did not transact during the period. A current acquisition or disposition still requires recent comparable sales, property condition, micro-location, financing, and a defensible adjustment process.

The published median gross-rent point estimates run from $1,147 in Middleton to $1,924 in Star; Meridian, Kuna, and Eagle cluster between $1,765 and $1,805. These figures do not establish statistically significant rank, tell us that every comparable unit in Star rents for more than one in Boise, or imply that Middleton automatically produces a better yield.

A citywide median reflects the rental units and renter households present in the sample. Single-family rentals, apartments, mobile homes, new construction, subsidized units, bedroom counts, and tenant-paid utilities all affect the mix. Current rent underwriting should narrow to product type, size, condition, concessions, and a recent comp set.

The owner-occupied share ranged from 63.1% in Garden City and 63.2% in Boise to 90.4% in Middleton. Meridian was 74.6%; Nampa 70.2%; Caldwell 73.0%; Eagle 84.1%; Kuna 82.5%; and Star 80.7%.

Tenure is not a score. A lower ownership rate may reflect a larger apartment base, smaller households, university or downtown-adjacent demand, or other features of the housing stock. A higher rate may reflect family-oriented subdivisions and limited rental inventory. For investors and builders, the useful question is which product is under- or over-supplied in the relevant submarket—not which percentage looks best in isolation.

Atlas uses the Census comparison to establish scale and housing context. The next layer is more current and more specific: monthly MLS or licensed transaction evidence, municipal permits, planning applications, rent comparables, property taxes, insurance, utilities, condition, and the relevant land-use rules.

That order matters. A broad data point can keep a property thesis grounded, but it cannot replace a property-level review. Atlas will preserve both layers and label them separately so a reader can see when a number is a demographic baseline, a live market observation, or an underwriting assumption.

Atlas transcribed the four displayed measures from the Census QuickFacts page for each city: median value of owner-occupied housing units, median gross rent, owner-occupied housing unit rate, and median household income. Each is labeled by the Census as a 2020–2024 estimate.

No ranking model, inflation adjustment, or cross-source substitution was applied. QuickFacts does not display margins of error next to these four city tiles; Atlas therefore treats them as descriptive point estimates and does not claim that small differences are statistically significant. The Census ACS API is the required next source for estimate-and-MOE analysis. This report is descriptive research, not an appraisal, rent opinion, fair-housing demographic recommendation, or prediction of return.