Two ZIPs Can Have the Same Score and Opposite Futures

[Haseeb Durrani]

Here's a trap I keep coming back to when I screen markets by any kind of score or grade: the number is a snapshot, and a snapshot can't tell you which direction a market is moving.

I've been building a dataset that ranks every US ZIP on cash flow, growth, and stability, and the clearest lesson out of it so far is how often two ZIPs look identical on the headline number and are heading in completely opposite directions. Two real examples:

• Gibsonton, FL (33534): cash flow ranks in the top tier, gross yield 8.7%
• Rockford, IL (61101): nearly the same cash flow rank, gross yield 13.1%

On an income screen these are twins. They'd land on the same shortlist. Now look at what their home values actually did over the trailing year:

• Gibsonton: down 5.1% (and down 7.4% over three years)
• Rockford: up 14.2% (and up 59.6% over three years)

Same income picture, opposite asset trajectory. Gibsonton is throwing off yield while the underlying asset depreciates. Rockford is throwing off the same yield while the asset appreciates double digits. If you bought Gibsonton purely on the cash-flow number, you'd be buying a real income stream attached to a shrinking asset base, and you might not notice until refinance time when the appraisal comes in soft.

Why the level and the direction are different questions

A cash-flow score, or any composite grade, tells you where a market ranks right now. It says nothing about how it got there. Two markets can land on the same number from opposite directions: one held that level for years, the other fell into it from higher up and is still sliding. The level is identical. The motion is the opposite. And for an investment decision, the motion is often the more important half.

So when I look at a market now, I separate two things explicitly:

Where it ranks today (the score, the yield, the vacancy, the snapshot metrics), and

Which way the inputs are moving (home values over the trailing 12 and 36 months, rent growth, and days on market).

Those are independent, and conflating them is where people get hurt. A market's ranking on a cash-flow basis can hold steady even while its home values fall, because everyone around it is falling too. Holding your rank in a declining field is not the same as standing still. The yield can look stable on a relative basis while the actual price chart points down.

The patterns worth naming

Once you track direction alongside level, a handful of recognizable shapes show up over and over in the data. Naming them is useful because each one forces a specific follow-up question:

High cash flow, falling home values. The yield is real but it's sitting on a depreciating asset. Gibsonton 33534 above is one. Garland, TX (75041) is another clean example: cash flow ranks in the top 4% of its metro, but home values are down 5.9% over the past year and 7.8% over three. The follow-up question: is the rent durable, or is the yield only high because the denominator (price) is collapsing? In Garland's case rents are actually still rising (+4.5%), which is reassuring; the high yield isn't only a falling-price artifact. But you only know that if you pull rent and price as separate trends.

High cash flow, sharply falling values. The severe version, where home values are down more than 15% in a year. This is rare and almost always a market in genuine distress. In my dataset only two ZIPs in the entire country hit that cut, both tiny eastern-Kentucky towns. Blackey (41804) is down about 36% over the past year and 46% over three, but with a population around 1,100 that number rests on very few transactions, which is exactly the kind of market where I treat the data as a flag to investigate rather than a fact to act on. The second one is small enough that there isn't even sufficient data to rank it on cash flow at all. When you see this pattern, treat the high yield as a symptom, not an opportunity, and treat a tiny population as a reason to trust the number less.

Strong cash flow with rising values. Income and appreciation pulling the same direction. Rockford 61101 above is the example. This is the rarest clean profile and the most attractive, but it's worth checking what's driving the appreciation and whether it's sustainable. Rockford's one yellow flag is a vacancy rate just over 10%, which is the kind of thing the headline yield hides.

Good current numbers, slipping momentum. Everything looks fine today, but the rankings underneath have started to move, sometimes violently, while the levels hold. Clifton, NJ (07012) is the example that makes the point. On the surface it looks excellent: cash flow 79, growth 78, and a stability score of 98, with all three comfortably in the upper tier. Nothing in the snapshot says "caution." But look at how those rankings moved over the past year: Cash Flow rank is up sharply (+28 points), Growth rank is down sharply (-25.6 points), and Stability is flat. The composite picture is steady; underneath, two of the three dimensions are pulling hard in opposite directions. A buyer who saw only the three healthy scores would miss that the growth ranking is in free fall even though the growth score itself still reads 78. That divergence between a stable level and a sliding direction is the entire signal, and it's invisible if you only look at the number.

Weak numbers, but the decline is easing. Here's the subtle one, and it's where days on market earns its keep. Federal Way, WA (98023) is a good case: home values are still soft (down 2.2%), but homes are selling about 33% faster than they were a year ago. That speed-up in absorption is buyer demand returning, and it tends to show up before prices turn. If you only watched the price line you'd write Federal Way off; the days-on-market line says something is firming underneath.

That last point is the one I'd most encourage people to internalize. Days on market is a leading indicator; price is a lagging one. By the time list prices visibly break, the slowdown has usually been underway for months, and the same is true in reverse on the way up. Watching how fast homes move in a given market tells you more about where it's headed than the current price does.

The practical takeaway

When you screen a market, get the snapshot, then immediately ask the second question: which way is it moving? Pull the trailing 12-month and 36-month home-value change. Pull rent growth separately, because rent and price don't always move together (a high yield from rising rent is a different animal than a high yield from falling price). And if you can get it, pull days on market, because it'll often turn before the price does.

Two markets with the same score are not the same investment. Rockford and Gibsonton prove it: same cash-flow rank, and one is appreciating 14% a year while the other depreciates 5%. The number won't tell you which is which. The direction will.

(All figures reflect home-value and rent data through April 2026. These markets move, so the specific numbers will have shifted by the time you read this, but the point about level versus direction holds regardless.)