Best Places to Buy Rental Property in Idaho (2026)
Nine Idaho cities ranked by asking rental yield, from 5.0 percent in Meridian to 3.8 percent in Coeur D Alene, using tracked home sales and rental listings; geographic coverage explained below.
Idaho shows a 1.1-point spread in gross asking rental yield, from 3.8 percent in Coeur D Alene to 5.0 percent in Meridian. Read the ratio as a screen and weigh it with purchase price, expenses and demand before ranking any of these markets against another. Second is Post Falls: 4.9 percent gross, $535,000 to buy, $2,197 a month to rent. The rental mix matters. In Boise the house median asking rent is $2,345 against $1,895 for all listings. That gap belongs in a house-to-house comparison, house rent against house sale prices, not on top of the mixed-sale ratio in the table. Coeur D Alene, the busiest market on the list with about 107 closings a month, sits last at 3.8 percent.
The ranking
| # | City | Gross yield | Median asking rent | Rentals (12 mo) | Median closed price | Closings | Sales window | Confirmed-close median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Meridian | 5.0% | $2,350 | 1,888 | $565,000 | 511 | 6 months | n/a |
| 2 | Post Falls | 4.9% | $2,197 | 566 | $535,000 | 471 | 6 months | n/a |
| 3 | Idaho Falls | 4.8% | $1,475 | 1,302 | $365,000 | 329 | 6 months | n/a |
| 4 | Sandpoint | 4.8% | $2,198 | 192 | $549,900 | 173 | 12 months | n/a |
| 5 | Nampa | 4.7% | $1,650 | 1,495 | $417,900 | 423 | 6 months | n/a |
| 6 | Rathdrum | 4.6% | $2,100 | 150 | $544,950 | 210 | 6 months | n/a |
| 7 | Boise | 4.4% | $1,895 | 3,952 | $515,000 | 622 | 6 months | n/a |
| 8 | Pocatello | 4.0% | $1,100 | 869 | $329,950 | 200 | 6 months | n/a |
| 9 | Coeur D Alene | 3.8% | $2,000 | 993 | $624,750 | 644 | 6 months | n/a |
City by city
1. Meridian, 5.0 percent gross
Rent is what puts Meridian first here; on price alone it would sit eighth of 9. The numbers: $565,000 median closed price across 511 closings, $2,350 median asking rent across 1,888 listings, 5.0 percent gross. The Meridian market page carries the monthly figures.
2. Post Falls, 4.9 percent gross
At $535,000 to buy and $2,197 a month to rent, Post Falls yields 4.9 percent gross on 471 tracked closings. Full detail is on the Post Falls market page.
3. Idaho Falls, 4.8 percent gross
At $365,000 to buy and $1,475 a month to rent, Idaho Falls yields 4.8 percent gross on 329 tracked closings. Houses there closed at about $168 per square foot. The Idaho Falls market page carries the monthly figures.
4. Sandpoint, 4.8 percent gross
Homes in Sandpoint closed at a median of $549,900 over the last twelve months and the median asking rent in the last twelve months was $2,198, a gross yield of 4.8 percent. See the Sandpoint page for the property mix and the price band.
5. Nampa, 4.7 percent gross
The numbers: $417,900 median closed price across 423 closings, $1,650 median asking rent across 1,495 listings, 4.7 percent gross. The Nampa market page carries the monthly figures.
6. Rathdrum, 4.6 percent gross
Homes in Rathdrum closed at a median of $544,950 over the last six months and the median asking rent in the last twelve months was $2,100, a gross yield of 4.6 percent. Full detail is on the Rathdrum market page.
7. Boise, 4.4 percent gross
At $515,000 to buy and $1,895 a month to rent, Boise yields 4.4 percent gross on 622 tracked closings. The Boise market page carries the monthly figures.
8. Pocatello, 4.0 percent gross
A low entry price does not carry Pocatello far: it is first cheapest on this list and eighth on yield, with rent of $1,100 against a $329,950 median price. At $329,950 to buy and $1,100 a month to rent, Pocatello yields 4.0 percent gross on 200 tracked closings. Full detail is on the Pocatello market page.
9. Coeur D Alene, 3.8 percent gross
The numbers: $624,750 median closed price across 644 closings, $2,000 median asking rent across 993 listings, 3.8 percent gross. The Coeur D Alene market page carries the monthly figures.
How this ranking is built
- •Cities: every Idaho city where Resideline tracked at least 100 closings inside the municipal boundary in its reporting window (six or twelve months) and at least 50 rental listings under the city's name since October 3, 2025: 9 cities qualify.
- •Prices: the median price homes closed at inside the city limits, from Resideline's tracked closings; the state comparison uses the statewide median of $520,000 across 6,156 closings.
- •Rents: the median advertised rent on rental listings Resideline tracked in the last twelve months, all property types, measured on the listings that carry the city's name (a postal footprint, wider than the city line in some places).
- •Confirmed-close medians: Observed rent blends two kinds of record: confirmed lease closes extracted from property records, and the final asking rent on listings that left Resideline tracking without a recorded close. Where a city has at least 30 confirmed closes in the window, their median is printed beside the asking figure; in the last twelve months about a quarter of Resideline's close episodes are confirmed closes. The asking and confirmed-close samples are separate, not paired, so a difference between their medians is not a measured gap on the same listings.
- •What is missing: taxes, insurance, vacancy, management and repairs, which turn a gross yield into a net one, and the unit mix, which differs between what sells and what rents.
Sources and related pages
- •Resideline tracked closings inside city limits (window per city, updated October 4, 2026) and rental listings since October 3, 2025; confirmed lease closes extracted from property records.
- •More Idaho rankings: Cheapest cities to buy a house in Idaho ranks the same kind of list with each city's price per square foot for houses, realized appreciation and days to contract beside the median, and Cap Rate by City ranks the Idaho cities Resideline tracks by gross rental yield. The Idaho housing market hub carries the statewide figures and the largest Idaho markets by closings.
- •Asking rent vs observed rent compares live asking rents with final asking rents under that study's own definition; it says nothing about confirmed lease closes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Idaho city has the highest asking rental yield?
Meridian, at 5.0 percent: a median asking rent of $2,350 against a median closed price of $565,000, on 511 closings and 1,888 rental listings. Rents and sales are separate samples, so the ratio is a screen rather than a guaranteed return on a given home.
Does the cheapest Idaho city also have the highest asking rental yield?
No. Pocatello is the cheapest at $329,950 but ranks eighth on the ratio; Meridian leads because its asking rent is high relative to its price. The ratio is a screen, not a matched property yield.
Are these asking rents or confirmed lease closes?
The yield column uses the median asking rent on tracked listings. Where a city has at least 30 confirmed lease closes in the window, the table also shows their median, so you can see how far asking sits from closes there. Resideline's close records blend confirmed closes with final asking rents on listings that left tracking, and about a quarter of the last twelve months are confirmed closes.
How many Idaho cities qualify?
Nine, each with at least 100 tracked closings inside the city limits and 50 rental listings in the last twelve months.
About the author
Jeffrey Batista
Jeffrey Batista is the founder of Resideline, a real estate technology company building institutional grade valuation and investment analysis tools for real estate investors.
A software engineer with more than 10 years of experience, Jeffrey has worked across full stack development, infrastructure, data engineering, machine learning, and large scale systems. He left his engineering career to build Resideline full time.
Jeffrey is also a real estate investor with nearly a decade of hands on experience buying, renovating, managing, and analyzing residential properties. His experience on both sides of the industry, as an engineer and an investor, led him to build Resideline after seeing how fragmented and outdated many of the tools available to individual investors were.
Today, he leads the development of Resideline's proprietary data infrastructure, automated valuation models, rental analytics, and investment underwriting technology.
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