Does a stabilized 6-bed in a mid-size market ever actually trade at a care-income multiple or does it always revert to house value

The exit market for a 6-bed is almost always a residential buyer or another operator buying at residential-plus-a-little, so your two comps are the data, not the exception.

What changes the picture is whether you can structure the purchase as a business acquisition with a lease-back of the real estate to yourself, because that split lets a future buyer finance the two pieces separately and widens the buyer pool enough that the care multiple can actually stick at exit.

Does the operator own the real estate here, or is there already a separation between the property entity and the operating entity?

The two comps you found are doing most of the work in your analysis, and they're pointing at the structural problem with RAL exits: the buyer pool for a licensed 6-bed residential facility in most mid-size markets is thin enough that residential floor price dominates. A strategic buyer, a regional operator who can integrate the census into an existing labor structure and spread G&A, might pay a care-income multiple. But that buyer showing up in Boise on a 6-bed is not guaranteed, and you cannot price an entry around a buyer who may not exist at exit.

The assumption doing the most work in the seller's $980,000 ask is that future buyers will be operators, not homeowners or landlords. At $246,000 gross, if you strip labor, food, supplies, insurance, regulatory overhead, and a management layer, you're probably looking at NOI somewhere in the $70,000 to $110,000 range depending on staffing model. Confirm that with current operator financials, not projections. Even at the high end, a reasonable care-business cap rate gets you to something well below $980,000, and the seller knows the house is worth $480,000 so they're pricing the spread and hoping you'll split it.

The risk you didn't name is licensure portability. In many states, the license is operator-specific, not property-specific. If you buy and want to run it yourself or install a new operator, you may be relicensing from scratch, which means a period of zero care revenue while the house sits at house value on your balance sheet. Talk to a healthcare licensing attorney in Idaho before that deal moves forward, that's a licensed professional question and it's not optional here.

Your comp read is probably right. The question worth investigating: were those two comps sold to owner-operators who already had licenses, or to buyers coming in cold? That distinction would tell you whether the thin multiple is a market condition or a buyer-profile issue.