Is Ohio a Good State for Rental Property? Real Numbers from Six Metros

Is Ohio a good state for rental property?

Most of my clients, who are either overseas or out-of-state, arrive at my door saying "Ohio" is where they're looking. They've read an article or seen a video somewhere saying that it's cheap, that it's landlord-friendly, and that the yields are double what they'd get at home. The first two are mostly true. The third is not always the case.

I'll start this breakdown with the state, because the state sets the rules by which we buy, own, manage and sell. On the regulatory side Ohio passes my 50-state filter for out-of-state and overseas landlords, but with notes which I'll come to in a minute.

• There's no restriction on foreign ownership.
• The state income tax is a flat 2.75% from 2026 on income over $26,050.
• There's no withholding when a nonresident sells.
• An Ohio LLC files no annual report.
• Closings can be done remotely with an online notary.
• The eviction statute is quick on paper.

All of that is good from a remote investor's perspective.

Then come the notes I mentioned earlier. Ohio has four rules that change a remote landlord's net income, and I've yet to find a single Ohio property market ranking page that mentions any of them.

1. A 2025 law shifts property tax off owner-occupiers and onto landlords over four years.
2. Every big city taxes your net rental profit, at 1.8% to 2.5%, on top of state and federal tax.
3. A nonresident alien buying any Ohio property over $100,000 must register with the Secretary of State.
4. Cleveland, Toledo and soon Columbus run rental registries with real teeth, and Cleveland won't grant you an eviction without one.

None of these kills the state as a location to buy and own rental property. Together they take about a point off the projected yield you'll have seen on these ranking pages online, and they can also cost you a fine or a lost eviction. I cover each one below.

I've owned 5 houses in Ohio over the past 10 years. All of them were or are in Cleveland.

Which Ohio cities are actually growing?

A growing population is a must-have for any buy-and-hold real estate investor. The honest answer is three of them, and it's not the three with the highest yields. Remember, yield is an output of price and rents. When prices drop, yields rise, but falling prices are usually driven by falling demand, and that's not a good thing.

The Census Bureau's 2025 population estimates came out in March 2026. They cover the year to July 1, 2025. Here are Ohio's eight largest metros.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 metro area estimates, released March 26, 2026.

Now look at what the "best of" ranking pages do with that. One foreign-investor lender's Ohio guide, updated in September 2026, ranks Youngstown first, then Toledo, Cleveland, Warren and Lima. Another ranks Youngstown and three of its suburbs in its top five. Why? Because their method is a very simplistic median rent divided by median price, and the cheapest houses in Ohio are in the places people are leaving. A 14% gross yield on a $58,000 house in a shrinking metro isn't a cash-flow market. It's a house that will be worth $58,000 in ten years if you're lucky, with a tenant pool that is often challenging to manage and getting smaller every year.

I've made that mistake with my own money. By 2022 I'd scaled to 124 properties by buying the cheapest houses I could find. Too many were on the wrong streets in the wrong places. I also had big problems with contractors and other partners, which I came to learn is very common at that end of the market. My portfolio collapsed in 2023, and the 30 I own today are the ones that were on the right streets. So when I see Youngstown at the top of a list, I know exactly what the list is measuring, and it isn't what you'll get. That spreadsheet with projected 12% cash on cash returns you're being sold is just not reality.

One more thing I noticed when I read through all the top lists, and this one seems to catch the honest writers too. Zillow publishes figures for Cleveland the city and for Cleveland the metro, and they're very different numbers. In September 2026 the typical metro home was worth $251,602. In July 2026 the typical home inside the city limits was worth $116,759. I've seen pages put the city's rent next to the metro's price and call it a yield. I've corrected that here so you have a credible source of truth, and every figure on this page says which geography it uses.

While neighborhood always trumps city or metro when it comes to numbers, here's the metro-level picture from Zillow's September 2026 market report, which only covers the three biggest in Ohio.

Cleveland is the only one of the three where rents are growing faster than the national rate. That is the honest version of "Cleveland is a city on the rise". The population is flat. The rents aren't. In fact, Cleveland's population declined for ten years until very recently. At the same time, property values and rents were increasing. That's food for thought for anyone who says there's a direct correlation between population growth and property values. And just because the metro population is on the up, that doesn't make it true for every neighborhood within it.

How do I grade an Ohio metro from 4,000 miles away?

The truth is, I don't. I grade the neighborhood, because that's what you're really buying. The state sets the rules and the metro sets the economy, but the street decides your long-term outcome as a rental property investor and landlord. I've written up the full method I use to score a neighborhood, so I'll only give the short version here.

Every area sits in one of three phases, which is the trajectory version of the A to D neighborhood grades I've used for years. Phase 1 is the cheapest, with no sign of lasting improvement. Phase 2 is still affordable and clearly getting better, moving from C-quality toward B. Phase 3 is established B-quality, safe and priced to match. I buy in Phase 2, on a positive trajectory. The direction matters more than today's level. A cheap area getting worse and a cheap area getting better look the same on a listing and are completely different investments.

Here's how I graded some of the neighborhoods in each of the six metros recently. These are all based on the property listings I've used throughout this article, which are all properties either for sale, or sold as a turnkey rental property.

All of these scores come from our own internal neighborhood analysis conducted in October and November 2026. All six are full reports, and the scorecards behind them are on my Ohio neighborhoods page. Columbus, Dayton, Akron and Norwood are graded without the street-level crime data those cities don't publish. The data behind every score is public: Census ACS five-year tables for income, poverty, tenure and vacancy; Census LEHD for jobs within five or ten miles; HUD's Picture of Subsidized Households for voucher tenancies; Eviction Lab's tract files where a city is tracked; the FBI Crime Data Explorer where a city publishes no incident data; HUD Small Area Fair Market Rents; and Redfin and Zillow for sales and asking rents.

What does a real Ohio rental property return, priced two ways?

This is the section no seller will write, so I'll write it.

Every turnkey property pro forma is built to look good. It books 5% for vacancy, 5% for maintenance, nothing for capital repairs, and whatever insurance figure makes the number work. Sometimes that figure is zero. Then you buy the house, and you insure it properly, and the furnace goes, and the 11% you were promised becomes 6%, or worse. Have you ever seen a pro forma with a line for the furnace? Me neither. The house didn't change. The assumptions were just thin, or missing.

So I price every house two ways. The pro forma way, on the seller's assumptions. And the reality way, on the costs a remote owner actually carries: 10% vacancy, 20% for maintenance and capital repairs together, 8% management, the real property tax bill, and a full-replacement insurance quote. I first did this on six real houses across six US markets, and the average gap was 3.3 points. Here are the seven real Ohio houses I've measured for this article.

Where each row comes from. The Cleveland duplex is a house I vetted and offered to clients, priced at my negotiated entry of $150,000 against an asking price of $175,000. The Toledo duplex is a house I sourced, priced, and recommended against. The Old Brooklyn house is a house I ran a full neighborhood report on in October 2026, let at $1,500 a month, at a $152,000 price. The Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati and Akron houses are listings on the open market or offered by turnkey sellers in November 2026, priced at asking because asking is what a retail buyer pays; I haven't vetted any of them and I'm not offering them. The Dayton and Akron ones came with the seller's own pro forma sheets, which is why they're here. I don't hold title to any of them. Cashflow Rentals sources from turnkey sellers and offers the vetted ones; it isn't a seller.

Here's the math on the Cleveland duplex, every line, so you can run it on any house you're sent.

Pro forma: $21,600 rent, less $1,080 vacancy (5%), less $1,080 maintenance (5%), less $1,728 management (8%), less $1,405 tax, less $0 insurance. That leaves $16,307. Divided by $150,000, that's 10.9%.

Reality: $21,600 rent, less $2,160 vacancy (10%), less $4,320 maintenance and capital repairs (20%), less $1,728 management (8%), less $1,405 tax, less $1,878 insurance. That leaves $10,109. Divided by $150,000, that's 6.7%.

The gap is $6,198 a year, or 4.1 points of yield, and $1,878 of it is one line the seller left blank. That blank isn't unusual: of the five landlord policies I've quoted, every one cost more than the seller's figure, and two sellers printed nothing at all. If I'd paid the asking price of $175,000 instead, the reality yield would be $10,109 divided by $175,000, or 5.8%. That one point is what the negotiation was worth.

On the Toledo house, the reality column is kinder than I'd actually be. Toledo evictions run at about 11% of renter households a year, so I budget a 15% reserve for vacancy and unpaid rent there at least, not 10%. And on a Toledo duplex the landlord usually pays water, sewer, storm water and refuse, which I estimated at about $1,596 a year. Add those and 38.8% of the rent is gone to tax, insurance, utilities and the reserve before management or repairs. That's why we passed. The Toledo report sits beside two Kansas City reports in the method article above, and two houses on one Kansas City street, 17 points apart, shows why I grade the street and not the ZIP.

The Old Brooklyn house is in a better neighborhood than either duplex and yields less. That's normal, and it's the trade I usually make. Reality: $18,000 less $1,800, $3,600 and $1,440, less $2,239 of tax and $800 of insurance, leaves $8,121, or 5.3%. The insurance is my figure, not a quote on this house; I insure similar Cleveland houses for about that. The tax is the 2025 bill, and it has already jumped from $853 in 2023 to $2,239 after the county's reappraisal; if the county resets the value to the sale price, it goes to about $3,560 and the yield to 4.5%. With a 70% loan at 7.45% the payment is $740 a month, so on my reserves the house loses about $64 a month at $152,000 and about $174 after a tax reset. On lighter reserves it makes about $236. That's the honest shape of a Phase 2 Cleveland house at a fair price: it carries itself and builds equity, and it doesn't pay you. I've written about why I think that's what cash flow actually is. Long-term stability over a glossy spreadsheet.

The Columbus house is the one to read against the Ohio lists, because it's the kind of house they're built on: a 4-bed Cape Cod from 1958, tenanted at a rent that checks out against the market, in a working neighborhood on the east side. Pro forma: $19,200 less $960, $960, $1,536 and $2,563 of tax, with the seller's blank for insurance, leaves $13,181, or 7.3% on $179,900. Reality: $19,200 less $1,920, $3,840, $1,536, $2,563 and $1,878 of insurance leaves $7,463, or 4.1%. And the reality column is still being kind. The listing says the central air doesn't work and the tenant runs window units, which is a capital bill in year one, not a reserve item. It also says the house needs cosmetic work and repairs. And the tenant is month to month, so the $1,600 lasts as long as the tenant does. At 4% before any of that, this is a house you buy for Columbus's growth, not for its cash flow. Either that, or you have to pay a lot less than asking price to make it work. The rent, for what it's worth, is real and slightly under market: the 4-bed median in the ZIP is $1,745 and HUD's payment standard for a 4-bed there is $1,820, so there's $150 to $200 of headroom once the air conditioning works.

The Dayton house is the one that came with a seller's pro forma. The sheet shows a 1920 two-story, rehabbed in 2019, at $107,500 with a tenant at $1,075 to January 2027, and projects 10.39% cash on cash with 75% financing and a 19.22% "ROI". Here's how it gets there. It budgets property tax at $2,424 a year, which is to the seller's credit, because the current bill is $455 on a county value of about $21,000 and a sale at $107,500 will reset it. Then it budgets $552 for insurance, 6% for management in year one only, and nothing at all for an empty month, a repair or a roof. The 19.22% adds $3,127 of depreciation, which is a tax deduction and not cash, and 2% a year of assumed appreciation. And the loan is a 7-year adjustable at 6.125%, which no foreign national is being quoted in late 2026.

Same house, my way. Pro forma: $12,900 rent less $645, $645, $1,032, the seller's $2,424 of tax and the seller's $552 of insurance leaves $7,602, or 7.1%. Reality: $12,900 less $1,290, $2,580, $1,032, $2,424 and $1,878 leaves $3,696, or 3.4%. Put a 70% loan on it at 7.45% and the payment is $524 a month, $6,283 a year, so the house loses about $216 a month on real reserves and makes about $110 on the seller's. To break even on my reserves it needs to be bought at about $63,200. The rent is also $205 under the ZIP: 3-bed houses in 45403 average $1,280, and HUD's payment standard for a 3-bed there is $1,280. At that rent, on the seller's reserves, $300 a month arrives at a price of about $103,000, which is roughly the asking price. So the sheet is right about one thing. The house works at $107,500 if you get market rent, carry no reserves, and nothing breaks. I've owned that kind of house. Something always breaks.

You can run any of these in my free rental property cash flow calculator. Put the seller's numbers in first. Then change vacancy to 10%, repairs to 20%, and insurance to a real quote, and watch what happens.

Method and limits. The yields are before financing. The cash flow row puts a 70% loan at 7.45% over 30 years on each house, which is roughly what a foreign national DSCR loan costs in late 2026; your rate will differ. Closing costs, with title, lender fees and the rest, run about 5% of the price on my deals, so the cash to close on the Columbus house at asking is about $54,000 down plus $9,000 of costs, $63,000 before the air conditioning fix. Closing costs change the cash in, not the monthly cash flow or the break-even price. Each row is one real house priced between June and November 2026. Rents are the actual leases, taken from the lease or the listing, except the Cincinnati row, which shows both the rent in place and the market rent from my comps, because the two give different answers. Property tax is the current bill, verified against the county for the two I vetted, taken from the public record for the Columbus listing, and the seller's post-sale projection for the Dayton listing because its current bill won't survive the sale. Insurance quotes are full-replacement landlord policies quoted in 2026; the Columbus row carries the Cleveland quote as a placeholder and says so. The pro forma column uses 5% vacancy, 5% maintenance, 0% capital, 8% management and the insurance figure the seller printed. The reality column uses 10% vacancy, 20% maintenance and capital, 8% management and the real quote. Yields are net operating income before financing, divided by the price basis shown. These are point-in-time figures for one house each, not market averages.

The Cincinnati duplex gets its own paragraph in the city section below, because its problem is the rent roll rather than the price. The Akron house gets one too, because its seller's sheet is the cleanest example on the page of how a turnkey number is built. For context, the gross yield on Zillow's typical city-level home value and rent for July 2026, a screening number and nothing more:

• Cleveland city 14.6%
• Toledo 10.2%
• Akron 9.6%
• Columbus 7.0%
• Cincinnati 6.9%

Take three to four points off any of those to get to a reality net yield.

Why is my Ohio property tax bill going up when the state says it's cutting taxes?

Because the cut is for owner-occupiers, and it's being paid for in part by you, the landlord.

Ohio passed four property tax bills on December 19, 2025. They took effect March 20, 2026, and most of the changes show on the 2026 bills. The headlines said tax relief. For a landlord, the main change runs the other way, and I haven't seen a single Ohio investing page mention it yet.

Here's the mechanism. Residential property in Ohio has carried a 10% "non-business credit" on most of its tax bill for decades. Rentals got it too. Owner-occupiers got an extra 2.5% on top. House Bill 186 phases the 10% credit out and moves the money to the owner-occupier credit instead.

Sources: R.C. 319.302 and R.C. 323.152 as amended by HB 186; the schedule as summarized by Squire Patton Boggs in February 2026 and Tucker Ellis in January 2026. Counties may add up to 2.5% more for owner-occupiers on top.

What it costs you is easy to work out. For every $1,000 of tax that currently qualifies for the credit, a rental's bill rises $25 in 2026, $50 in 2027, $75 in 2028 and $100 from 2029. So a rental paying $2,000 of qualifying tax today pays about $200 a year more by 2029 from the credit change alone, before any reappraisal. The same house owner-occupied gets about $308 off at 15.38%. By 2029 the gap between a landlord and a homeowner on the same street is about 15 points of credit, where it's 2.5 today. One sponsor of the bill put the shift at roughly $400 million a year moving toward owner-occupiers.

The other three bills are mostly on your side. HB 186 also caps the growth of some school levies at inflation, with a credit that shows on the second-half 2026 bill. HB 335 caps the growth of inside millage, the unvoted part of the rate, at inflation. HB 309 lets county budget commissions cut voted levies they find excessive. HB 129 changes how the school floor is calculated. Whether any of them reaches your bill depends on your county and school district. In Cuyahoga County, 19 of 32 school districts, including Cleveland's, get nothing from the school levy cap, because they aren't at the floor it applies to.

One more thing you'll read about. A citizens' group is trying to abolish Ohio property tax by constitutional amendment. It didn't make the November 2026 ballot and is now aiming for 2027. I wouldn't price a deal on it, and even if it did happen, I believe there's a good chance it would apply to owner-occupiers anyway.

If the mechanics of Ohio millage and the 35% assessment ratio are new to you, I explain how US property tax works for a foreign owner separately. The short version for Ohio: taxable value is 35% of market value, the rate is set in mills per dollar of taxable value, and the county reappraises every six years with an update at three.

Do I owe Ohio city income tax on my rent?

Almost certainly yes, and this is the one that surprises every foreign owner I've worked with. It's a reasonable thing to be surprised by. Nobody tells you.

Ohio lets municipalities tax income earned inside their borders. Net profit from a rental property located in the city counts, whether you live in the city, in another state, or in another country. R.C. 718.01 sets the base, and it's net profit. So a Cleveland rental owned from London owes Cleveland 2.5% of its net rental profit every year, on top of Ohio's 2.75% and whatever you owe the IRS.

Most Cleveland suburbs collect through RITA, the Regional Income Tax Agency, at their own rates. Rates as published by CCA and RITA for 2026; check your city's own page before you file.

Three practical points. First, the tax is on net profit, the same figure that goes on your federal Schedule E, so after mortgage interest, depreciation and expenses it's usually small. On the Cleveland duplex above, the reality net operating income is $10,109 before interest and depreciation, so the city's 2.5% is $253 at most, and less once the loan is in. Second, the filing trigger is low. CCA requires a return once gross rent passes $125 a month. Third, a single-member LLC files on the Schedule E figures; a partnership or multi-member LLC files a net-profit return in the city where the house is. Your cross-border CPA should know all of this. In my experience, about half of them don't, so ask.

The state layer is simpler. Ohio charges a flat 2.75% from the 2026 tax year on income over $26,050, after HB 96. A nonresident files an IT 1040 with the IT NRC schedule for Ohio-source rent. There's no withholding on rent paid to a nonresident individual, and no withholding when you sell. How you structure the ownership of your US rental property matters more for the federal side than for Ohio.

What must a foreign or out-of-state owner register in Ohio?

Three things at state level, and then whatever your city adds. I'll take them in order of how often I see them missed.

The 1979 rule. Under R.C. 5301.254, a nonresident alien who acquires Ohio real property worth more than $100,000, or more than three acres, must file a registration with the Ohio Secretary of State within 30 days. "Nonresident alien" here means anyone who isn't a US citizen and isn't domiciled in the US. It covers an LLC too, if nonresident aliens own 10% of it individually or 40% between them. The fee is $5 for a person and $25 for an entity. The penalty under R.C. 5301.99 is a fine of at least $5,000 and up to 25% of the property's value. The rule has been on the books since March 1979. The $100,000 threshold catches almost every rental purchase in Cleveland, Columbus or Cincinnati today. I'd be surprised if one foreign owner in twenty has filed. Enforcement is rare. The penalty isn't small. My advice? File it in the same week you close. It's a short form and $5. Ask your title company or attorney to file it alongside the deed, and keep the receipt.

The county registry. Under R.C. 5323.02, every owner of residential rental property registers with the county auditor: name, address, parcels. An owner who doesn't live in Ohio must name an Ohio resident as agent for service, unless the LLC already has a statutory agent on file with the Secretary of State. Miss it and the county adds a $50 to $150 assessment to your tax bill.

The disclosure you don't owe. Ohio's foreign-adversary land law, R.C. 5301.256, covers agricultural land and land near critical infrastructure. It doesn't reach a residential rental, and it doesn't apply to buyers from the countries most of my clients come from. The federal FinCEN rule on all-cash purchases through LLCs was vacated by a court in March 2026 and isn't in force. I mention both because plenty of 2025 advice still says otherwise.

Then the cities. This is where Ohio gets real for a remote owner, and where the ranking pages are silent.

Sources: City of Cleveland rental registration; Cleveland's pay-to-stay ordinance; Columbus City Code 4515, 4551.03 and 4551.07; Toledo Lead Safe; WCPO on Cincinnati's pay-to-stay ruling; WVXU on Cincinnati's 2023 ordinances; Signal Cleveland on source-of-income laws. "Not that I found" means I looked and found nothing, not that there's nothing. Rules change; check the city before you buy.

Two of those rows deserve a sentence each. Pay-to-stay means a tenant can stop an eviction for unpaid rent by paying what they owe, plus late fees and sometimes court costs, up to the hearing. It costs you time, not the rent. Source-of-income protection means you can't refuse an applicant because they hold a housing voucher. I've written about what Section 8 actually pays and what it doesn't, and in Columbus and Toledo the choice isn't yours to make.

Cleveland's regime is the strictest, and a federal court dismissed the landlords' challenge to it in August 2025, so it's settled. The practical point for a remote owner is the local agent. If you live outside Cuyahoga County or its neighbors, you need someone inside them to sign a notarized affidavit taking responsibility for code compliance. Your property manager can do it. Mine does. And the lead-safe certificate matters at purchase: the Old Brooklyn house above had a tenant in place and no certificate or registration on the city's records. That's a condition to clear before closing, not after.

How long does an eviction take in Ohio, and where is it slower?

Five to eight weeks on paper. Longer in Cleveland. Here's what you need to know: the statute first, then the reality.

Ohio's eviction law is R.C. Chapter 1923. For unpaid rent you serve a 3-day notice to leave, with wording the statute sets. Accept any rent after the notice and you've waived it. You file in the municipal or county court, the hearing is set within 7 to 14 days of filing, the tenant is served at least 7 days before it, and if you win, the writ is executed within 10 days. Court costs are a couple of hundred dollars. If your LLC owns the house, an attorney has to file for you in most courts, so add their fee. Uncontested, that's five to eight weeks from notice to possession.

Cleveland is different, and I own there, so I notice. Cleveland Housing Court covers the city and Bratenahl only. It sets hearings at about 21 days from filing. It runs a Right to Counsel program with Legal Aid for low-income tenants with a child. It has pay-to-stay. And it won't grant an eviction without your rental registration. My property manager there told me on a call recently that an uncontested judgment takes about 45 to 60 days, and then there's a wait of two to three months for the bailiffs to hand back possession. In 2025 the court took 5,999 filings; more than a third went to mediation, and about 1,000 were dismissed because the tenant paid up.

Then there's the number that tells you about the market rather than about your tenant: how many eviction cases are being filed, and which way that's moving. Eviction Lab at Princeton tracks four of Ohio's six big metros. Here's the latest 12 months against the 12 before.

Sources: Eviction Lab, Eviction Tracking System, pulled October 16, 2026, for the first four rows. Eviction Lab doesn't track Akron or Dayton, so those two rows come from Community Legal Aid's count reported in June 2025 and the Dayton Daily News analysis of Ohio Supreme Court data, and they're older. The Ohio Supreme Court's court statistics dashboard carries forcible entry and detainer counts by court if you want the current year. These are filings, not evictions; most filings end in a payment, a move-out or a dismissal. Don't compare the counts across rows, because the Cleveland, Toledo, Akron and Dayton figures cover the city court only while the Cincinnati and Columbus figures cover the whole county. Compare the direction, or divide by renter households: on the 2020 Census counts, Akron's 3,055 is about 7.3% of its 41,660 renter households and Dayton's 3,000 is about 9.5% of its 31,629, against Cleveland's 6.0% in 2025 and Columbus's roughly 9.5% countywide.

Two things stand out. Cleveland's filings rose faster in the year to June 2026 than in any of the 43 cities Eviction Lab tracks, and faster again in the first half of 2026, up 26% on the same months a year earlier. That's from a low base: Cleveland is still 20% below its pre-pandemic average, where Columbus is 36% above its own. And neither rising rents nor falling wages explain which Ohio cities rose, which I tested on all 43 cities in where eviction filings are rising fastest. Kansas City, where I also own, fell 2.5% over the same period. I don't know why Cleveland's filings jumped, and I'd rather say so than guess. It's one of the questions I ask my property manager there every month.

I've written the process up in full, how to evict a US tenant when you live in another country, and I'm living it on a Cleveland file right now, so I'll keep this section short. The lesson for Ohio is the same as everywhere: the court is the last line. The first line is the street you bought on, and the second is a property manager who files the day rent is late.

City by city: the six metros

Strongest cash-flow case first.

Cleveland

The cash-flow market, and the only Ohio metro where I've vetted and offered houses. Typical metro home $251,602, rent $1,440 and rising 4.5% a year, both from Zillow, September 2026. Inside the city, typical values are under half that, and that's where the yield comes from. Population is flat. The neighborhoods I've scored are West Boulevard on the west side, C+ and Phase 2, where owner-occupancy is rising and crime is falling on the better blocks, and Old Brooklyn to the southwest, 61 of 100 and Phase 2, with 4% vacancy against 16% citywide, evictions at 0.44 times the city rate, and homes selling in 20 days at asking. Rents in that tract rose 61% in five years. The compliance load is the heaviest in Ohio and the court is the slowest. I buy here anyway, because the numbers survive the reality column. I've written a full Cleveland guide, and one of my clients, Daniel, from Germany, bought here and in Kansas City. Another client arrived wanting to pay cash for Cleveland duplexes because he thought a foreigner had to, and financed them with DSCR loans instead.

Here's what a Cleveland deal looks like when it works, on the same two-way method as the rest of the page. The West Boulevard duplex: two units, $1,800 a month across two leases, asking $175,000, my offer $150,000. Pro forma, $21,600 less $1,080, $1,080, $1,728 and $1,405 of tax, with the seller's $0 for insurance, leaves $16,307, or 10.9%. Reality, $21,600 less $2,160, $4,320, $1,728, $1,405 and a real $1,878 insurance quote, leaves $10,109, or 6.7%. With a 70% loan at 7.45%, $105,000 borrowed, the payment is $730 a month, $8,767 a year, so the duplex clears about $112 a month on my reserves at $150,000. That's the whole trade: a C+ neighborhood on a Phase 2 trajectory, a price $25,000 under asking, and a house that pays its own way after honest costs with a little left over. It won't make you rich in year one. It won't cost you money either, and that is rarer than the ranking pages make it sound.

I've owned five houses here over the past ten years, and I still own in Cleveland today, so every rule in this section is one I pay for.

Akron

Thirty-five miles south of Cleveland, in the same economic orbit, with a flat population and city-level typical values around $141,611 and rents around $1,137, both Zillow, July 2026. That's a 9.6% gross yield on the typical house, about two points under Cleveland city and three above Columbus. Akron has a source-of-income ordinance, so voucher applicants can't be refused.

The South Akron house above is the Akron row, and it's the cleanest example on the page of how a turnkey number is built, so I'll take the seller's sheet apart line by line. The sheet offers a 1923 colonial, rehabbed to 4 beds and 1.5 baths, at $130,000, against an appraisal of $151,000, and calls the difference "instant equity". It projects $1,250 of rent, $1,898 of tax, $750 of insurance, and no management in year one. With an 80% loan at 7.10% it shows $330 a month and a 13% cash-on-cash return.

The neighborhood, on my full neighborhood report, scored 51 of 100, three points into Phase 2, and I'd call it fragile. It's a near-average Akron tract on income, poverty and owner-occupancy. Two things pull it up and three pull it down. Up: Akron's crime count is on pace to finish a third below 2022. And 27% of the tract's renters hold a voucher, the deepest voucher market I've scored in Ohio, two-thirds of them in 3-bed-plus homes, which matters because a voucher tenancy in this tract runs over nine years on HUD's numbers and HUD's 4-bed payment standard here is $460 above the asking rent. Down: 21% of homes are empty against 10% citywide. Three-quarters of the housing is pre-1939. Jobs within five miles fell 3% in ten years, the only Ohio tract on this page where they did. Eviction Lab doesn't track Akron, so the tract's own filing rate is pending. The city as a whole ran 3,055 filings in 2024, about 7.3% of its renter households, and Akron has been reported as having the highest eviction rate in Ohio, so the likely result takes the tract to 50 and Phase 1.

Start with what's right. The rent is fair: $1,250 is the median asking rent for a 4-bed house in the ZIP, and HUD's payment standard for a 4-bed there is $1,710. The tax estimate is the right order of magnitude for a sale at this price. Now the rest. The house rented at $725 before the rehab, so the rent is a projection on a renovation, not a lease. Management at 0% is a year-one discount; at 8% it's $100 a month, which is a third of the $330 on its own. There's no vacancy, no repairs and no capital line. The insurance is $750 on a 1923 wood-sided house. And the loan is 80% at 7.10%, which is a better loan than a foreign national gets.

Same house, my way, at the turnkey price. Pro forma: $15,000 less $750, $750, $1,200, $1,898 and $750 leaves $9,652, or 7.4%. Reality: $15,000 less $1,500, $3,000, $1,200, $1,898 and $1,878 leaves $5,524, or 4.2%. With a 70% loan at 7.45% the payment is $633 a month, so the house makes about $171 a month on the seller's reserves and loses about $173 on mine. Break-even on my reserves is a price of about $94,500; $300 a month on the seller's reserves needs about $103,500. The $21,000 of "instant equity" is the gap between an appraisal I haven't seen and the price, on a house in a ZIP where rentals sit 49 days. It isn't cash and it isn't a return. If the appraisal is sound it's a margin of safety, which is worth having. It's not worth paying for twice.

I'd want the eviction count and the appraisal before I said more about the house. About the sheet, I've said enough.

Dayton

The smallest city of the six at 826,554 people and the one growing fastest after Columbus, up 5,604 in the year. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the logistics corridor anchor the jobs. Prices are the lowest of the six after Toledo. Dayton passed pay-to-stay in 2021. The Burkhardt house above is the Dayton row: a 1920 two-story rehabbed in 2019, bought by the seller for $74,900 that July and offered at $107,500 now, with a tenant at $1,075 to January 2027. I'm a little suspicious of that margin. To me, it seems too thin to have done any meaningful renovation and still make a profit. Maybe the house was already in great shape, but I'd definitely want to see a full scope of work and get a thorough home inspection.

I ran a full neighborhood report on the neighborhood, census tract 23 in Burkhardt, and it scored 43 of 100, Phase 1, which on my scale means don't buy it. More than a quarter of the homes in the tract are empty, 28% against 17% citywide. Poverty is 38% against the city's 27%. Two-thirds of the housing was built before 1939. Jobs within five miles grew 0.4% in ten years. Dayton's crime rate, 52 offenses per 1,000 residents on the FBI's 2025 count, is the highest of the Ohio cities I've run. The city publishes no street-level data to grade the block against it. The sales market is the one bright spot: the ZIP's median price is up 20% in a year and houses sell in three weeks. That's investors buying rehabs like this one, and it tells you what the sellers think, not what the tenants do.

Three more things about it are Dayton things, not seller things. The county carries the house at about $21,000 and the tax bill is $455; Montgomery County reappraises in 2026 and the sale will reset it, which is why the seller's own sheet budgets $2,424. The rent is $205 under the ZIP's 3-bed average, on a one-year lease. And the house has no central air and one bath, which is what $107,500 buys in Dayton. Dayton as a metro is the one I'd keep looking at, because the price of entry is half of Columbus and the population is growing. This neighborhood isn't where I'd look, and the house, at this price, isn't the one.

Toledo

Flat population, cheap houses, and Realtor.com's number four housing market for 2026, which tells you about affordability for owner-occupiers, not about rental demand. I sourced a duplex here in the Bancroft Hills area near the university, priced it, and passed on it. The neighborhood scored 49 of 100, Phase 1: real incomes are flat, poverty at 43%, shootings up through 2025, tenancies of two to four years because of the student market, and 38.8% of the rent gone to fixed costs before management. The 16% gross yield was the best thing about the deal, but it wasn't enough. Toledo also has the state's strictest lead rule after Cleveland's, a certificate before every new tenant on pre-1978 houses, plus pay-to-stay and source-of-income protection since April 2021. Some blocks in Toledo are improving. I'd buy on one of those at the right price. Not this one.

Cincinnati

Growing, but in the suburbs: the metro added 13,107 people and Hamilton County added 559. Typical metro home $306,903, rent $1,522, from Zillow, September 2026. City-level gross yield on the typical house is 6.9%. The municipal income tax is the lowest of the six at 1.8%. Pay-to-stay has been enforced since a court upheld it in July 2022, and the city funded a tenant Access to Counsel program in 2023.

The Norwood duplex above is the Cincinnati row, and it's the most interesting house on the page, because the location is the best and the deal is still wrong. Norwood is its own city inside Cincinnati, with its own schools and its own income tax, under a mile from Xavier. The building is a 1913 brick two-unit, a 1/1 downstairs and a 3/1 with a loft upstairs, asking $259,900 after sixteen months on and off the market, one failed contract and $55,100 of price cuts. The seller bought it for $119,900 in 2016. Both units are tenanted and the listing gives one number, $1,925 a month for both.

I ran a full neighborhood report on the tract. It's the best neighborhood on this page by most of what I measure. Eviction filings run at 0.6 times the county rate and are falling faster than the county's. Home values in the tract doubled between 2019 and 2024. Poverty fell from 30% to 17%. Norwood's schools rate 5 and 6 out of 10, the best of any Ohio neighborhood I've scored. Jobs within five miles, which includes downtown Cincinnati, grew 7%. A $250 million mixed-use district is going up on the old playing-card factory nearby. The one soft spot in the score is crime, and the crime number is suspect. Norwood's FBI count for May 2026 shows 130 property offenses. Every other month of the past two years shows 21 to 64. That looks like a batch of old reports filed at once, and I've graded it as one, which puts the tract at 55 and Phase 2. Graded as filed it's 50 and Phase 1, so if it was one I were buying or sourcing I'd ask the police department before anything else. The other weak spot is vacancy, 20% against Norwood's 12%. The tract added 176 housing units over the period, so some of that is new stock in lease-up.

Then I ran the comps. Fourteen one-bed units in the ZIP ask a median of $983, and HUD's payment standard for a one-bed there is $1,050. Six three-bed units in small buildings ask a median of $1,813, the 3/1 next door asks $2,200, and HUD's three-bed standard is $1,780. The building should collect about $2,800. It collects $1,925, and a 2024 rental listing at $875 says the 1/1 is near market, which puts the 3/1 at about $1,050, $700 to $900 under every comparable unit in the ZIP. So this row runs two ways twice: on the rents in place, and on the rents the building should earn.

At the rents in place, with a 70% loan at 7.45%, the building loses about $500 a month on my reserves, and break-even is a price of about $157,200. At market rents it makes about $42 a month at the asking price, 6.0% before financing, which is the Cleveland duplex's number. Reset the tax to about $4,850, which a sale at $259,900 will do and which Hamilton County's 2026 update may do anyway, and it loses about $91 a month. The price for $300 a month at market rents is about $207,000 before the reset and about $179,700 after it.

Then the part the listing is silent on, and the part that decides the price. A 1913 building has a slate roof, two furnaces, two air conditioners, two water heaters and an electrical panel, and the listing says nothing about the age of any of them. I don't want to pay for those over the next ten years, one emergency at a time, with a tenant upstairs. When each unit turns over, and getting to market rent means they will, I'd replace what's old before the next tenant moves in, and I want the price to carry that cost. Every $10,000 the inspection puts on the list comes off the price if I want the same return, because it's cash in on day one that earns nothing until something would have failed. Until a contractor has quoted the roof and the mechanicals, $179,700 is the ceiling and the real number is lower.

The leases are the other unknown. The listing says both units are occupied and gives no terms, so how long the $1,925 lasts, and when the turnovers that unlock the market rent and the refit can happen, is a question for the agent before any offer.

The Phase 2 pockets exist in Cincinnati. This one is in a Phase 3 location at a Phase 3 price with Phase 1 rents, and it's the one building on the page I'd actually want, at the right price, with the leases read and the systems quoted. The listing meets none of those yet.

Columbus

Ohio's growth story and its worst cash-flow story, and both are true at once. The metro added 21,312 people in the year, about twice the national rate, and NAR named it one of its ten hot spots for 2026 (both rankings via Ohio REALTORS). A typical home is priced around $328,082, and rents at $1,525, Zillow, September 2026. Rents grew 2.9%, home values 1.1%. The east-side house above is the test case: a 4/2 at a rent that matches the ZIP, asking $179,900 after two price cuts, and 4.1% yield on real costs before the air conditioning repair bill.

I ran a full neighborhood report on its neighborhood, tract 93.11 in the city's Mid East, and it scored 60 of 100, Phase 2. That's a good neighborhood. Real incomes are up 54% since 2019, poverty is down from 26% to 20%, half the homes are owner-occupied against 42% citywide, and jobs within 10 miles grew 18% in a decade.

The deal is what doesn't work, and the price is why. Put a 70% loan on it at 7.45% over 30 years and the payment is $876 a month, $10,515 a year. On the seller's kind of reserves (5% vacancy, 5% maintenance, taxes allowed to rise 15%, a $1,300 insurance placeholder) the net operating income is $11,497, which leaves $982 a year, or $82 a month, before you've fixed the air conditioning. On my reserves, the reality column above, net operating income is $7,463, and after the same loan payment the house loses about $3,050 a year, or $254 a month. So the question isn't whether it cash flows at $179,900. It doesn't. The question is the price at which it would. Every dollar of price carries 5.84 cents of annual debt service at this rate and term, so on my reserves it breaks even at $7,463 ÷ 0.0584, about $127,700. On the seller's reserves it makes $300 a month at ($11,497 − $3,600) ÷ 0.0584, about $135,100. Both are below the $150,000 the seller paid in 2021, which tells you the problem is a 2026 asking price on 2021 rent. Reset the rent to the $1,745 median once the air conditioning is fixed and the $300-a-month price rises to about $159,500. Still not $179,900.

Two things from the report worth knowing before anyone buys on that street. Columbus publishes no address-level crime data, so the crime grade rests on the city's FBI counts, which are down 32% since 2022; check the quarter mile on the police department's public map yourself. And the tract's raw eviction filing rate is 2.2 times the county's, but 113 of its 136 filings in the year to September came from one apartment complex 0.43 miles away. Take that building out and the single-family streets run at about half the county rate. Same tract, two different rental markets.

Columbus as a whole is a Phase 3 market at Phase 3 prices, and the cheaper pockets carry the 1950s capital costs that eat the difference.

One more Columbus listing is worth a sentence, because it's the other way the "cash flow" line gets written. A renovated 3/2.5 in the Hilltop, asking $190,000 and marketed as turnkey with "immediate cash flow", gave no rent on the sale listing. The MLS rental record had it: leased at $1,150 a month, a month after the sale listing went up, with the buyer required to assume it to June 2027. Comparable 3-beds in that ZIP ask $1,400 to $1,645. A tenant placed at 75% of market to make a sale listing say "tenanted" costs the buyer about $4,000 a year for twenty months. Ask for the lease date and the ledger before you believe the word turnkey.

On the rules, Columbus has source-of-income protection since 2021, pay-to-stay since 2023, a 60-day notice rule for rent increases over 10%, and from 2027 a rental registry at $15 a unit. If you want appreciation and a liquid exit and you're happy with thin cash flow, Columbus is a reasonable choice. It isn't what I'd buy for cash flow, and I'd rather say so than sell you Ohio as one market.

Which Ohio markets do I actually work in, and why only those?

Cleveland. That's it, for now.

I could write about six metros because I can pull the data on all of them, but I only vet and offer houses where I have a property manager I trust, contractors I've used, and enough deals priced to know what a fair number looks like. In Ohio that's Cleveland. If you're looking at a Cleveland house, this is how I source and verify one for a client. If you're looking at a house in Columbus or Dayton, I'll tell you what I think of the numbers, and I'll tell you I haven't got a property manager there yet. Both answers are worth something. Only one of them is a service.

The bottom line

Ohio is a good state to own rentals in, and a bad state to buy from a ranking list. The rules are fair, the state tax is low, and in Cleveland the numbers hold up after you insure the house properly and reserve for the furnace. But the state is being sold as one market when it's at least three, and the cities with the biggest yields on the lists are the ones I'd never buy in. Pick the metro on direction, not on level. Then forget the metro and pick the street. Then run the numbers twice, once the seller's way and once mine, and register everything the state and the city ask you to, because the fines are real and the sellers won't tell you. Remember, investing isn't a game of certainties, it's a game of probabilities, and in Ohio most of the probability is decided before you've looked at a single house.

If you want the checklist I use before I'll put a client into any US rental, it's in my foreign investor starter kit.