Pepin County, Wisconsin Eviction Risk: Low

Pepin County sits in the bluffs along the Mississippi eviction laws River in far western Wisconsin eviction laws, a rural county of about 2,970 residents where the rental market is small, rents are modest, and the legal environment leans noticeably landlord-friendly. The county carries an eviction risk score of 2.8/10 (Low), placing it 61st out of 72 Wisconsin eviction laws counties - meaning 60 counties statewide carry a higher eviction risk than Pepin County. That positioning firmly establishes Pepin as one of the lower-risk counties in Wisconsin eviction laws for tenant eviction exposure.

With only four incorporated municipalities tracked, the county's city-level scores are tightly grouped between 2.3 and 2.9 - an unusually narrow spread that reflects the consistency of a small rural rental market operating almost entirely under state statute rather than any local overlay. The city of Pepin, the county's namesake waterfront community, holds the highest municipal score at 2.9/10. The county seat Durand, which is also the largest city with 1,731 residents and the center of most rental activity, comes in at 2.8/10. Further down the range, Arkansaw registers 2.6/10, while Rock Falls, the smallest community in the set at 169 residents, records the lowest score in the county at 2.3/10. These figures track closely with the state average of 3.1/10, which underscores that Pepin County's risk profile is shaped primarily by statewide baseline law rather than any local policy amplifier.

The county's 26.6% renter share is below the Wisconsin eviction laws average, meaning a majority of housing in Pepin County is owner-occupied. Among those who do rent, average rent runs $848 per month - well below many Wisconsin eviction laws metro areas - yet the rent burden still reaches 33.4%, meaning the typical renter household devotes more than a third of income to housing costs. The poverty rate sits at 7.9%. Wisconsin eviction laws's landlord-tenant framework under Wis. Stat. § 704 controls all residential leases in the county without modification: no local rent control is permitted under the state's preemption statute, no just-cause requirement applies to evictions, and source-of-income protections do not extend to rental housing. A landlord pursuing non-payment of rent must serve a 5-day notice before filing; a lease-violation cure notice runs 14 days; a no-cause end-of-term notice requires 30 days. Court filing fees for small evictions run $95 to $175, with sheriff lockout costs between $50 and $150 on top of that. Uncontested eviction cases typically resolve within 21 to 45 days; contested cases can stretch from 45 to 120 days. For tenants, the Wisconsin eviction laws Equal Rights Division handles fair housing complaints at the state level, though the county's relative economic stability and low renter density mean that formal enforcement actions are relatively uncommon here.

Pepin County's 2.8/10 score reflects a low-density western Wisconsin eviction laws county where state-level landlord-tenant law sets the terms with no local overlay - rents are modest at $848/month, renter share is 26.6%, and the narrow 2.3-2.9 city score spread signals consistent baseline risk across all four municipalities.