Duplexes in Youngstown OH 2026: Prices, Rents, Cost to Own

The short version: a two-to-four-unit home in Youngstown is one of the cheapest ways into ownership left in the country. Entry price is $127,500, the median surviving listing is $190,000. On the middle deal, a $129,900 two-unit, the rent from the second unit covers enough of the payment that you keep $230 a month compared with renting.

How much does a duplex cost in Youngstown in 2026?

28 two-to-four-unit homes were listed in the Youngstown metro when this ran. 14 of them failed none of my seven checks: a price floor, the FHA loan limit, price per square foot, gross rental yield, neighborhood violent crime, abandoned-property share and the five-year value trend. The prices on this page are from those 14 survivors, not the raw feed.

What the two prices mean: entry ($127,500) is the 25th percentile, the price at which a quarter of surviving listings sit below you. Typical ($190,000) is the median. The deal I use for the monthly numbers is a different thing: the survivor in the middle when all 14 are ranked by what they keep, not by price. That was a 2-unit, 3-bedroom building at $129,900 in ZIP 44509.

What is the average rent in Youngstown in 2026?

A one-bedroom in Youngstown rents for about $790 a month, Zumper’s asking rent for mid-2026. The model scales that figure by ZIP with HUD’s FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rents, so a building in a cheaper ZIP is measured against a cheaper rent. A two-bedroom is about $990 on HUD’s FY2026 small-area fair market rents, the median across 9 ZIPs, and $922 on Zumper’s asking-rent data for July 2026.

Why it matters twice: that rent is what you would pay to keep renting, and it is also roughly what the other unit pays you. The middle deal collects $799 a month from its rented unit. I count that rent only after a maintenance and vacancy allowance. It is not treated as free money.

What you pay each month living in one unit and renting the other

The full payment on the middle deal, with an FHA loan at 3.5% down and a 6.71% 30-year fixed rate, is $1,231 a month including mortgage insurance, property tax and insurance. The rented unit brings in $799. After the allowance, your share of the month is about $560, against $790 to rent a one-bedroom nearby.

How the mortgage rate changes what you keep in Youngstown

What this means for you: at 5.00% the middle deal keeps $368 a month; at 7.50% it keeps $163. The deal never stops working across that range: a full point of rate moves the month by about $82, because the loan behind a $129,900 building is small. Every figure is the same 14-listing screen re-run at each rate, prices and rents held.

How much income do you need to buy a duplex in Youngstown?

On the typical $190,000 building the full payment at 6.71% is about $1,800 a month. FHA’s front-end guideline (payment at 31% of gross income) puts that at $69,683 a year. The back-end guideline (43%, with no other debt) puts it at $50,237. Real approvals land between the two.

The part most buyers miss: an FHA lender can count 75% of the second unit’s rent toward your income when it qualifies you. The median household here earns $57,812.

The assistance test: HUD puts the Youngstown area median income at $81,900 for a four-person household (FY2026). Most down payment programs cap eligibility at HUD’s low-income (80%) limit, which HUD publishes as $70,150 for four people and $49,150 for one. The $69,683 front-end figure above sits $467 under that four-person limit. Household size and each program’s own cap decide it.

Down payment and assistance for a Youngstown duplex

Renting the other unit to a Section 8 voucher tenant in Youngstown

The short version: with a Housing Choice Voucher, the tenant pays a share of the rent set from their income and the housing authority pays you the rest, up to a cap called the payment standard. In Youngstown the main voucher agency is the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority (YMHA). I did not find a current two-bedroom payment standard on the pages I read, so ask the housing authority for the figure that applies to the building.

Youngstown is not on HUD’s list of metros required to use Small Area Fair Market Rents, so a housing authority here may set one payment standard for the metro, anywhere from 90% to 110% of the metro-wide Fair Market Rent, or choose ZIP-level figures. HUD’s FY2027 two-bedroom Fair Market Rent for the Youngstown-Warren, OH MSA, in effect from October 1, 2026, is $1,003 (FY2026: $973), so that basic range runs from about $903 to $1,103.

The catch: the payment standard is a ceiling, not an offer.

HUD’s rule is that “the PHA may not approve a lease until the PHA determines that the initial rent to owner is a reasonable rent”, judged against rents for similar unassisted units.

The housing authority’s monthly payment is the lower of the payment standard or the gross rent, minus the tenant’s share, and when the rent is above the payment standard, a family moving in cannot take on a share above “40 percent of the family’s adjusted monthly income”.

A rent well above what similar units nearby get can fail even when it sits under the payment standard.

The inspection: before the lease starts, HUD’s rule requires that “The unit has been inspected by the PHA and passes HQS”; HQS are HUD’s Housing Quality Standards. HUD is moving voucher inspections to its newer NSPIRE standard, but under Notice PIH 2026-18 housing authorities “may continue using HQS as previously defined or other HUD-approved inspection methods as their inspection standards until February 1, 2027”.

What Ohio law says about voucher tenants: Ohio has no statewide source-of-income law: its fair housing statute bars discrimination because of “race, color, religion, sex, military status, familial status, ancestry, disability, or national origin”, and source of income is not on that list.

Source of income is not a federal protected class: the Fair Housing Act’s rental rule lists “because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin”. This summarizes what the laws say; it is not legal advice.

One more 2026 fact: in December 2025 HUD recommended that housing authorities “Stop issuing new vouchers (except HUD-VASH and new FYI vouchers)” to keep 2026 costs inside their funding. Fewer new voucher holders may be searching while that lasts, so ask the housing authority whether it is issuing.

FHA loan limits in Youngstown (2026)

FHA, the Federal Housing Administration, is the loan program that lets an owner-occupant buy a two-to-four-unit building with 3.5% down. It caps how large a loan it will insure, county by county. Mahoning County, OH sits at the national floor for 2026, so the standard limits apply. The cap rises with the number of units, which matters for house hacking: a duplex gets a higher limit than a single-family house.

The cap is not the binding check here. The typical entry price in Youngstown is $127,500, less than a fifth of the two-unit limit, and 3.5% down on $127,500 is about $4,462 before closing costs. Every listing in my screen was already checked against the county FHA limit, so nothing that survived is limit-constrained.

Source: HUD Mortgagee Letter 2025-23, limits effective for FHA case numbers assigned on or after January 1, 2026. Re-read from hud.gov on September 2, 2026.

What local reporting says about Youngstown duplex prices

The model is a screen, not a local expert. Here is where independent reporting agrees with it, and where it pushes back.

Where outside sources agree

• Demolition backlog essentially cleared (~200 blighted properties left from thousands); new construction restarted after 15 years – matches our other-vacant and value-trend inputs improving.
• Homicides down 56% in a year and shootings down about 56% since 2021; eight homicides by the end of August 2025 was the lowest count at that point since records began in 1967.^[S1]

Where they do not, and why it matters

• The crime gate runs in Youngstown, using an FBI Table 8 2018 anchor of 665.8 per 100k, which is BELOW the 689.6 national city median. Only 2 of its 28 crime-screened listings (7%) fail the gate, and the 14 survivors and +0.295 keep ratio are unchanged. The CrimeGrade ‘D’ grade reflects Youngstown’s ZIPs relative to the whole country; the FBI city rate says the city as a whole is mid-pack. Both can be true, and the gate now judges it on the same basis as every other metro.
• 14 listings is thin enough that a handful of unusual deals could move the entry price and keep ratio materially.
• Ultium/Lordstown whipsawed 1,334 jobs in one year (cut Oct 2025, rehired Jul 2026) – single-employer dependence our state-level durability inputs do not resolve at metro grain.

What this page does not tell you

• Flood insurance is not modeled anywhere in this analysis. Budget for it separately.
• Condition is screened statistically, not inspected. A cheap building can still be a money pit.
• The rent figure is a market benchmark, not a signed lease. Verify achievable rent on the specific unit.
• An FHA owner-occupant loan requires you to live in one of the units for at least a year.
• Accessory dwelling unit rules for Youngstown are not sourced on this page yet.

Ready to start looking?

If your numbers work and you’re ready to actually shop for a duplex, here are local brokerages that handle investment and rental property in the Youngstown area. I don’t know them personally and I’m not endorsing anyone, so treat it as a starting point for your first few calls, not a ranking. A good fit will be comfortable with two-to-four-unit listings and can point you toward Ohio’s OHFA for owner-occupant buyers.

A starting point, not an endorsement. I don’t know these agents personally and I’m not vouching for any of them. No referral fees, nobody paid to be included, and this list can change.

Are you one of these agents? Feel free to add VanToVault to your resources page, and email hello@vantovault.com so I can keep your listing accurate.

This page stays free either way.

Keep comparing: first-time buyer programs in Ohio, and the duplex numbers for Cincinnati and Allentown.

Where these numbers come from

• Homicides -56% in a year, The Vindicator, 2025
• Demolition era ends, building resumes, The Vindicator, 2024
• CrimeGrade D / 23rd percentile, CrimeGrade, 2025
• Ultium layoffs then rehiring, Ideastream / Vindicator, 2025-2026
• Predatory absentee-landlord controversy (304 units, ~90 in violation), Business Journal Daily, 2024
• Listing prices and counts: active two-to-four-unit listings (Realtor.com, Movoto), screened for price floor, FHA county limit, price per square foot, gross yield, neighborhood violent crime, abandoned-property share and home-value trend.
• Rents: the one-bedroom figure is the average of Zumper and Apartment List metro asking rents (May to July 2026; RentCafe stands in for Zumper in Cleveland and Scranton, and is Buffalo's only series, August 31, 2026); the model scales it per ZIP by HUD FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rents relative to the metro FMR. The two-bedroom figure is the HUD FY2026 SAFMR median across the ZIPs where surviving listings sit, with Zumper's two-bedroom asking rent as a second reading. Six metros carry a single one-bedroom series (Bakersfield, Buffalo, Rochester, Scranton, Syracuse, Youngstown).
• Local economy: unemployment is the BLS metro rate where one is published and the state rate otherwise; rental vacancy is the Census Housing Vacancy Survey state rate for every metro; median household income is ACS 2024 one-year (B19013); population is the Census Vintage 2025 metro-area estimate.
• Neighborhood safety screen: violent crime by ZIP, CrimeGrade.org, anchored to FBI city-level rates (Table 8, 2019; 2018 for Youngstown).
• Mortgage rate: 30-year fixed, Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey: 6.71% is the rate used throughout this analysis. The rate chart re-runs the same screen at each rate.
• Loan terms and mortgage insurance: FHA 3.5% minimum down payment and MIP schedule, HUD Handbook 4000.1. Income guidelines: FHA 31% / 43% qualifying ratios, same handbook. Area median income and the 80% limit: HUD FY2026 Income Limits (Section 8), huduser.gov.
• Property taxes: county effective property-tax rates. Insurance: state average premiums, scaled to price.
• Down payment assistance: state and local program terms, checked for two-to-four-unit eligibility.
• All of it, as one file: the open data page (CC BY 4.0).
• The Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority (YMHA), landlord page; read September 28, 2026.
• HUD, Designated Small Area Fair Market Rent (SAFMR) Areas (last updated August 2024): "The following 65 metro areas are designated as mandatory SAFMR areas by HUD."
• Code of Federal Regulations, 24 CFR 982.503 (payment standard basic range), 982.505 (the monthly payment), 982.507 (reasonable rent), 982.508 (the 40% limit at move-in) and 982.305 (inspection before the lease); read September 28, 2026.
• HUD, Notice PIH 2026-18 (July 15, 2026), NSPIRE administrative procedures for voucher programs.
• Source-of-income law: Ohio Revised Code 4112.02 (codes.ohio.gov, effective April 6, 2023); 42 U.S.C. §3604(a); read September 28, 2026.
• NAHRO, HUD Recommends PHAs Cease Issuing New Vouchers (December 23, 2025).
• HUD, FY2026 Fair Market Rents (revised), Youngstown-Warren, OH MSA (METRO49660M49660); read September 28, 2026. FY2027 figures: HUD, FY2027 Fair Market Rents, Youngstown-Warren, OH MSA (METRO49660M49660), effective October 1, 2026; read September 29, 2026.

Figures reflect the Foothold model run at the 6.71% model rate (Freddie Mac PMMS, week of September 3, 2026) on listings from June to August 2026, and are estimates for comparison, not an appraisal or a loan quote. Verify the numbers on any specific building before making an offer.