Tillman County, OK
Property Data

Where Land Is Cheap, Vacancy Is High, and the Market Tells a Hard Story

Tillman County sits in the southwestern corner of Oklahoma, a windswept stretch of the Anadarko Basin where cotton fields and cattle ranches define the economy more than any office park or tech corridor ever will. Frederick, the county seat, is a small agricultural town that once anchored a broader regional economy — but like much of rural southwestern Oklahoma, Tillman County has been quietly losing population for decades. The housing data here doesn't just reflect a market; it reflects a community working hard to hold itself together.

The most striking number in this dataset isn't the home price — it's the vacancy rate. Nearly 30% of all housing units sit empty, a figure that dwarfs the national average of roughly 11%. That's not a seasonal fluctuation or a vacation-home phenomenon. In a county with fewer than 7,000 residents and a population density of just 8 people per square mile, vacancy at this scale signals long-term outmigration: young people leaving for Oklahoma City, Lawton, or beyond, and not enough new arrivals to fill the homes they leave behind.

Key Statistics

Affordability That Doesn't Fix Everything

On paper, Tillman County looks extraordinarily affordable. At $59 per square foot and a median home price of $110,000, buyers can acquire a 1,800-square-foot home for less than what a down payment costs in Denver or Austin. The price-to-income ratio is well under 3x — a benchmark that housing economists would consider healthy. And yet nearly 23% of renters are severely rent-burdened, spending more than half their income on housing. That paradox is explained by the income floor, not the price ceiling: a $704 median rent is genuinely difficult when household incomes are fragile and 17% of residents live below the poverty line.

The 25.9% disability rate is also well above national norms, a pattern common in rural Oklahoma counties where agricultural and manual labor careers take a physical toll, healthcare access is limited, and an aging population (20% are 65+) is living on fixed incomes. Only 12.9% of residents lack health insurance — lower than you might expect — but that likely reflects high rates of Medicare and Medicaid enrollment rather than employer-sponsored coverage, with private insurance at a remarkably low 1.1%.

A Thin Market, Volatile by Nature

With only 11 sales recorded in the past 12 months, Tillman County's real estate market is less a market and more a series of individual transactions. A year-over-year price decline of 15.6% sounds alarming, but in a county where a handful of sales can swing the median by $20,000 in either direction, statistical noise is doing real work here. What is clear: this is not a market with speculative upside. It's a market where value is functional, not financial.

The wide spread between the 10th percentile price ($52,320) and the 90th ($323,000) tells its own story — there are distressed properties selling for almost nothing, and there are larger agricultural parcels or well-maintained homes that command genuine premiums. The average price of $149,310 runs nearly $40,000 above the median, suggesting those upper-tier properties are pulling the average up.

FAQs

What makes Tillman County, Oklahoma unique in the housing market? Tillman County combines some of the lowest home prices in the nation with one of the highest vacancy rates, a combination that reflects sustained population loss in a rural agricultural community rather than a cyclical downturn. It's a buyer's market in the most literal sense — but demand is the missing ingredient.

Is it a good time to buy property in Tillman County? Buyers seeking low entry costs and large lots or agricultural land will find prices genuinely hard to beat. However, the 15.6% year-over-year price decline and high vacancy rate suggest limited appreciation potential in the near term. Purchases here make more sense as utilitarian investments — a homestead, a farm, a retirement property — than as speculative plays.

Why is the labor force participation rate so low in Tillman County? At 53.6%, labor force participation is significantly below the national average of around 62%. This reflects a combination of factors: a large retired population (20% are 65+), elevated disability rates tied to the physical demands of agricultural and manual work, and limited local employment options that can discourage active job-seeking, particularly among working-age adults in caregiving roles.