Rural county at 3,300 a month per resident, or the metro edge at 6,400 with a house that costs three times as much

The forty person labor pool is the number I would keep staring at. Rate risk you can survive for a while. A shift with nobody in it is a licensing event in most states, and you should ask your state agency what happens on an unstaffed shift before you count on covering it yourself.

I would also want to know what those two existing rural homes pay their people. If they are at 15 and fully staffed, that tells you something. If they are running with the owner sleeping over three nights a week, that tells you something else.

My small multifamily is in a town about that size and every trade I use is one person deep. Same problem, lower stakes. When my one plumber had a knee replacement I went five weeks with a slow leak.

Before either version, read the rural county's zoning text on group homes and the state licensing rule side by side. I have seen small towns where the residential care use is technically permitted statewide and the local occupancy or parking language still makes six beds a fight, and how those two interact is a question for a land use attorney in that state.

On the money, your rural version hides a cost. Forty miles to the discharge planner means somebody drives it, weekly, forever. Price that person's time and mileage into your marketing line rather than pretending referrals arrive by email.

Managing in both kinds of market, the thing that actually differs is turnover cost, not wage. In the suburb I lose a caregiver and I have four applicants inside a week at 21 an hour. In the small town I lose one and I am covering shifts myself for a month while I wait.

So the rural wage saving is real on paper and mostly gets eaten by overtime and agency fill when it goes wrong. Agency rates in a thin market are punishing because they know you have no alternative.

How do you background check caregivers in a town where everybody is somebody's cousin? That is the part that would stop me cold.

The basis difference matters more than this thread is giving it credit for. 215k plus 90k against 620k plus 90k is a different life. If the rural home never gets past four beds you are carrying 305k, and a three-bedroom ranch in a county seat is still a house somebody wants.

The suburban one at three beds filled is a 710k problem with metro payroll attached, and the conversion work you did makes it a worse house to resell as a house. Ask which failure you can afford, then answer the rate question.

@trellis put it plainly and I think that settles it for the boring version. I would rather pay 22 an hour in a market with applicants than 15 in a market with none.

The rate spread also is not free money in the suburb. At 6,400 you are competing against a licensed community with a chef and a bus, and families compare. In the rural county at 3,300 your competition is the daughter's spare bedroom, which is a harder competitor than people expect.

@hollow do you have a third version where you buy in the rural county and lease the house to the operator who already runs one of those two homes there? Then their staffing problem stays theirs and you own a cheap house with a rent check. Their existing team is the only labor pool answer anybody in this thread has come up with.