Hancock County land: prices, flood and parcels

Parcels: County tax roll, counted on our map built Oct 14, 2026.

Acres on the roll: County tax roll, counted on our map built Oct 14, 2026.

In a FEMA flood zone: FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer, as of Oct 11, 2026; counted on our map built Oct 14, 2026.

Land / lot sales: Recorded sales in the county files, counted on our map built Oct 14, 2026.

Illinois Property Tax Code 35 ILCS 200/21-15, 35 ILCS 200/21-25, 35 ILCS 200/21-30 and 35 ILCS 200/16-55. Checked Oct 13, 2026.

The middle half (25th to 75th percentile) and the median of arm's-length single-parcel land sales. Each size uses its own months (the shortest of 12, 24 or 36 that holds enough sales), so the sizes' counts need not add up to another figure on this page. Source: Illinois Department of Revenue PTAX-203 declarations, land or farm at the sale, screen S1. Recorded sales, not an estimate of any parcel.

Counties that share a boundary or a corner, from the US Census Bureau's county adjacency file (2024). A county whose page is held or not live yet is listed without a link.

FEMA flood zone (A or V): FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer, as of Oct 11, 2026; counted on our map built Oct 14, 2026.

Parcels at least 25% wetland: USFWS National Wetlands Inventory, as of Oct 1, 2026; counted on our map built Oct 14, 2026.

The share of each town's parcels with any part in FEMA flood zone A or V, and the share with at least 25% of the parcel mapped as wetland. These are the figures each town's own page prints. Towns are Census places: a parcel counts in the place whose boundary holds its point, the same areas as the town pages. A town split between counties counts here only for its part in this county. The table lists the 20 largest towns with 100 or more parcels, the highest flood share first.

Source: FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer, file of Oct 11, 2026; USFWS National Wetlands Inventory, as of Oct 1, 2026; the county's parcel roll.

Area statistics for buildings with NFIP flood insurance, not any one parcel: a lot that never had an insured building has no claims to count. Claims counted from 1978 to Sep 2026.

Source: OpenFEMA NFIP Redacted Claims v3, as of Sep 2026.

Middle half: the middle half of premiums on single-family NFIP policies that took effect Sep 2025–Sep 2026, by the flood zone each policy is rated in. It is what insured homes here pay, not a quote for any one building.

Full-risk median: the median of FEMA's own full-risk premium for the same policies (Risk Rating 2.0). A discounted policy rises toward it a step each year, within the law's cap on yearly increases.

Source: OpenFEMA NFIP Redacted Policies v3, as of Sep 2026.

Each federal declaration whose designated areas include the county, declared from January 2000 on, counted once by its FEMA disaster number. An emergency declaration and a major-disaster declaration for the same storm are two declarations, as FEMA numbers them. Declarations for tribal lands alone are not counted. The date shown is when the most recent incident began. Types are FEMA's incident types: an evacuation emergency for a storm elsewhere (Hurricane Katrina, 2005) is listed as that, not as a storm that struck the county. By kind: 9 major disasters and 3 emergencies.

Source: FEMA, OpenFEMA Dataset: Disaster Declarations Summaries - v2, as of October 2026. This product uses the Federal Emergency Management Agency's OpenFEMA API, but is not endorsed by FEMA. The Federal Government or FEMA cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data.

Hurricanes and tropical storms: the National Hurricane Center's final storm tracks for the 1950–2025 seasons. A storm counts when its center came within 50 miles of the county's boundary. NHC records a storm's position every six hours; the path between those points is filled in with straight steps every ten minutes. A storm counts as a hurricane if it was one (winds of 74 mph or more) while within 50 miles, otherwise as a tropical storm (39 mph or more; subtropical storms included). A storm that had already lost its tropical status is not counted. A storm's status (hurricane, tropical storm or neither) holds until NHC's next position records a change. The category is the Saffir-Simpson category at the storm's highest wind within 50 miles.

Tornadoes: the Storm Prediction Center's tornado records, 1950–2025. Each tornado counts once for a county when SPC lists that county for it or its recorded path (a straight line from touchdown to lift-off) crosses the county. Ratings use the Fujita scale (F) before February 2007 and the Enhanced Fujita scale (EF) since; tornadoes with no rating are left out of the rating figures.

These are counts of past storms, not a forecast. They are a different measure from federal disaster declarations, which name every county a storm affected, wherever its center went.

Sources: NOAA National Hurricane Center, HURDAT2 best tracks (Atlantic and Northeast Pacific files, through 2025); NOAA Storm Prediction Center, Severe Weather Database (tornadoes) (through 2025). Public domain.

Rent: USDA NASS county cash rents survey, 2026 (released August 21, 2026), public domain. Sale prices: Illinois Department of Revenue transfer declarations (PTAX-203).

A year’s cash rent for an acre, divided by the median price an acre paid for the same kind of land in this county over the last three years: sales of a single parcel of 10 acres or more, never lots or house sites. Sales counted: Illinois transfer declarations (IDOR PTAX-203) of 10 acres or more that the parties declared as farm property, single-parcel deeds for value with none of the form’s related-party, distress or partial-interest answers checked. Where fewer than 10 such sales were recorded, or their prices range too widely, no figure is shown. A low share usually means land here is priced for something other than farming, such as homes or development.

This tracks home values, not land values. Land buyers read it as a sign of demand nearby: where homes gain value, builders and buyers follow. A vacant lot can move differently.

How: the change in FHFA's annual county index from 2020 and 2024 to 2025, rounded. The index follows repeat sales and refinance appraisals of the same single-family homes with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgages. It is in today's dollars, not adjusted for inflation, and FHFA calls these local indexes developmental. Where FHFA's sample is too small it publishes no figure, and none prints here.

Source: FHFA House Price Index, all-transactions, annual county index, 2025, last updated March 31, 2026. Method: Bogin, Doerner and Larson, “Local House Price Dynamics: New Indices and Stylized Facts”, FHFA Working Paper 16-01.

This is an area figure, not any one property's bill. A parcel's own tax depends on its taxable value, its exemptions and the taxing districts it sits in; parcel pages estimate that separately where the county publishes what is needed.

How: the county's median yearly property-tax bill divided by its median home value, both for owner-occupied homes (about 6,191 here) as owners report them in the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, 2020–2024. Owners estimate their home's value, and the survey has a margin of error; we show the figure only where the area has at least 250 owner-occupied homes and the margin is narrow. Median bill $2,060; median home value $113,800.

Source: Census ACS 2020–2024 5-year, tables B25103 and B25077, released January 2026.

Places are Census places (cities, towns and named communities), counted inside their limits. Counted from USGS Annual NLCD land cover (2015, 2020 and 2025; 30 m squares on a 240 m grid, so edges are approximate). A square counts when it was forest, shrub, grassland, pasture, cropland or wetland in the start year and developed in 2025 (NLCD's developed classes, from lawns and roads to dense buildings). A satellite land-cover map misses some changes and mislabels a few; read it as a guide.

Source: USGS Annual NLCD Collection 1.2, public domain, DOI 10.5066/P94UXNTS.

How: the frost dates are NOAA's 50% dates for 32°F: in half of the years 1991–2020 the last spring frost came before the first date, and in half the first fall frost came before the second (a date in January or February means the following winter). The growing season is NOAA's typical count of frost-free days, worked out year by year, so it can differ by a few days from the gap between the two dates (by more where frost is rare). Hot days, rain (with melted snow) and snowfall are 1991–2020 yearly averages. For a county the station is the middle one, by growing season, of the NOAA stations inside the county that sit in (or a half-zone from) the hardiness zone most of its land is in; with none inside, the nearest matching station to its center (below). A town's station is the nearest NOAA station within 25 miles whose winter lows match the place's (within 5°F on the hardiness map's coldest-night figure), so a valley station is not used for a hilltop town. A low spot or a hillside on your own land can frost earlier or later.

Hardiness zone: the 2023 USDA map, which sorts places by the average coldest night of the year (1991–2020) into 10°F zones split into 5°F halves. For a county it is read across all of the county's land, about every half mile; the range leaves out its coldest and warmest 5%.

Sources: NOAA NCEI U.S. Climate Normals, 1991–2020 (La Harpe, station USC00114823, 690 ft); USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, 2023 (USDA Agricultural Research Service and Oregon State University PRISM). Compiled October 30, 2026.

Recorded arm's-length sales of land, one parcel each, from Illinois Department of Revenue PTAX-203 transfer declarations, recorded through Sep 2026. Recorded sales, not an estimate of any parcel.

U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program, Vintage 2025 (May 2026); U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year (B19013) (Jan 2026); U.S. Census Bureau, Building Permits Survey (Sep 2026).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates (tables B01003, B19013, B25077, B25064, B08013, B08012, B08301), Census Summary File.

ACS figures are survey averages over five years (money in 2024 dollars), not a count. Home value is what owners told the Census their home would sell for, not a market estimate, so it can sit below Groundwork’s single-family estimates, which follow recent sales. ± is the Census 90% margin of error; a figure whose margin is more than about half its size (a CV over 30%) is not shown. The average commute is total travel time divided by the workers who travel to work, as Census computes it. Places under 2,500 people show no figures.

Shortage designations: HRSA Health Professional Shortage Areas (primary care, mental health, dental), HRSA data, as of October 2026. Hospitals: CMS Care Compare hospital list (hospitals that report an emergency department), July 2026, located by the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder or, where it found no match, the USGS National Structures Dataset hospital point (a few hospitals neither finds are placed from their street address, or by their ZIP code's center only where that cannot change the count or the names shown); distances from the Census Bureau's center point of the county or town (2026 Gazetteer).

A Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) is the federal government's finding that an area, or a group of people in it, has too few primary-care doctors, dentists or mental-health providers for its population. A geographic designation covers everyone in the area; a population designation (for example “Low Income Population HPSA”) covers only that group. Some designations cover only some census tracts or county subdivisions (the “areas” counted). The designation types and statuses are HRSA's own words; a designation HRSA has proposed for withdrawal stays on its list until it is withdrawn, and only designations with status “Designated” are in the summary sentence. A designation is about how many providers there are, not the quality of care. Hospitals counted are acute-care, critical-access and rural emergency hospitals that report an emergency department to Medicare, under the name filed with Medicare or the hospital's current name; one Medicare listing can cover more than one campus. Veterans', military, children's and psychiatric hospitals are not counted, and no ratings are shown.

District figures: NCES Common Core of Data, school district file, school year 2024-25 (U.S. Department of Education, public domain). Students are the fall membership count; students per teacher divides them by full-time-equivalent classroom teachers. Regular public school districts only (not charter-only, state-run or regional service agencies).

Based in the county means the district's office address is in the county; a district can reach into neighboring counties. The 5 largest are listed; 3 smaller districts are not.

These are districts, not attendance zones: a home is zoned for particular schools by its district. No ratings or test scores are shown.