Jackson Parish

Jackson Parish sits at a median home price of $117,653, making it one of the more affordable entry points in Louisiana. The data shows home values declined 2.63% year-over-year, which matters for how you frame your thesis: this is not a market where you buy for appreciation. The appreciation score of 37 out of 100 confirms that. The cash flow score registers at zero, and the investmentEstimate fields for cap rate, cash-on-cash return, and net cash flow are all unpopulated, meaning the tool cannot confirm a working rental spread at current prices and rates. With a 6.85% rate on the financing side, even a $117,653 purchase requires careful underwriting before you assume positive carry.

The affordability index of 100 and affordability score of 100 out of 100 tell you something real: this market is cheap enough that an all-cash or low-leverage buyer has room to manufacture a return that a financed buyer cannot. The investor this market suits is either a cash buyer hunting yield on deeply affordable assets or a value-add operator willing to bring distressed properties to rentable condition in a market where acquisition costs are low enough to absorb renovation capital. Appreciation buyers should look elsewhere. The 2.63% price decline and the 37 appreciation score are not a setup for equity growth, and the population of 15,093 is thin enough that demand-driven price appreciation is structurally limited. If your model depends on exit multiples expanding, Jackson Parish is the wrong county.

The tax and insurance picture is one of the cleaner carry cost stories in the data set. Louisiana's state-average effective property tax rate is 0.55%, flagged as low, which translates to $647 annually on a $117,653 asset. Insurance runs $777 annually at the 0.66% rate. Combined, that is $119 per month in tax and insurance carry, which is a genuine tailwind for a cash-flow underwrite. At a purchase price this low, $119 per month in fixed overhead is manageable, and the low property tax rate deserves a favorable line on your model. That said, these figures use a state-average effective rate from Tax Foundation 2024 data, and actual Jackson Parish or township-level rates may differ, so pull the parish assessor's numbers before you close.

On the neighbor comparison, Jackson Parish's $117,653 median sits well below every comparable in the data except West Carroll Parish at $120,526. Rapides Parish at $165,369 carries a gross rent-to-price ratio of 0.0705, Tangipahoa at $217,337 runs 0.0678, and Saint Tammany at $275,874 runs 0.0678. Beauregard at $189,090 shows 0.0621. All four neighbors with rent data show ratios in the 0.062 to 0.071 range, which suggests the broader Louisiana market can support gross yields in that band. If Jackson Parish can achieve comparable rent-to-price ratios given its lower price point, the math could work, but that is a rent comps question the data does not answer directly. Rapides Parish, at a 61 overall score versus Jackson's 60, offers a slightly higher score, a larger population base, and a confirmed 7.05% gross rent-to-price ratio, making it the stronger option for a financed buyer who needs proven rental demand. Jackson Parish makes more sense than a neighbor if your strategy is purely price-point-driven and you are deploying cash or minimal leverage in a market where $119 in monthly tax and insurance carry keeps fixed costs low while you wait for rents to pencil.

The primary risks here are concentration and scale. A population of 15,093 means the renter pool is thin, vacancy can move materially on the loss of a single tenant, and liquidity on exit will be limited. The year-over-year price decline of 2.63% suggests buyer demand is not accelerating, so any capital improvements you make need to be recoverable through rent rather than resale. No economic anchor data was provided, so job base stability and employer concentration cannot be assessed from this data set. That absence is itself a caution flag: before committing capital to a 15,000-person parish with declining home values, verifying what drives local employment is a necessary diligence step that this data set does not resolve.