Franklin County

Franklin County, Mississippi comes in with a median home price of $159,866, down roughly 2% year-over-year, and an affordability index of 96, which is about as accessible a market as you'll find anywhere. The problem is that the cash flow score is zero and the cap rate field returns zero, which tells you the rent-to-price math here either doesn't close or is thin enough that the model can't confirm it does. Without a confirmed gross rent figure, you're underwriting blind on yield. What the data does confirm is that Franklin sits at the 52nd national percentile with an appreciation score of 40 out of 100 and a stability score of 50. That positions it squarely in neither-here-nor-there territory: not a cash flow machine, not an appreciation play, not particularly stable. It's a cheap market where cheapness is the main argument.

That framing matters when you're deciding who this market suits. An appreciation buyer wants population growth, job creation, and price momentum, and Franklin's 2% price decline combined with a population of just 7,690 doesn't support that thesis. A cash flow buyer needs gross rent data to underwrite, and the absence of a confirmed rent figure in this dataset is itself a signal worth respecting. The one buyer who might find Franklin interesting is a deep-value operator willing to buy at $159,866, work the asset hard through renovation or repositioning, and bet on holding costs staying low. The affordability score of 96 says the price ceiling relative to local incomes is already stretched, so don't count on organic appreciation bailing you out if your value-add thesis doesn't execute.

On carry costs, the tax and insurance picture is at least one clean tailwind. At Mississippi's state-average effective property tax rate of 0.81%, annual taxes on a $159,866 purchase run approximately $1,295. Annual insurance comes in at roughly $799, putting combined monthly tax and insurance at $175. That's a real underwriting input: $175 per month in fixed carry before you touch maintenance, vacancy, or management. The 0.81% rate is flagged as normal, and it is normal for Mississippi, which is one of the lower-tax states. That said, the caveat matters: this is a state-average estimate from the Tax Foundation 2024 data, and actual county and township rates in Franklin can differ from that figure, so pull the county assessor's numbers before you finalize your underwrite.

The dataset does not include economic anchor employers for Franklin County, so no comment on specific job drivers is warranted here. What the population figure alone tells you is that 7,690 residents is a thin tenant pool. Small-county markets in Mississippi can work for investors who know the local market cold and have boots on the ground, but thin populations mean thin liquidity on exit, concentrated tenant demand, and real sensitivity to any single employer pullback or demographic shift. At this size, one factory closure or one school consolidation changes your vacancy picture materially. That's not invented risk, that's arithmetic.

The neighbor comparison sharpens the picture. Forrest County, with a median home price of $182,639 and a confirmed rent-to-price ratio of 7.34%, and Harrison County, at $220,811 with a rent-to-price ratio of 7.55%, both score 62 overall versus Franklin's 60. Those two counties cost more to enter but give you confirmed gross yield figures, which means you can actually model the deal. If you're a cash flow buyer, paying up from $159,866 to $182,639 or $220,811 to buy into a market where you know what rent looks like is almost certainly the better trade. Pike County at $97,344 and an overall score of 61 is cheaper than Franklin and scores marginally higher, which makes it the more interesting deep-discount comparison if price is your primary filter. Smith County at $154,816 and Neshoba County at $140,745 both score 59, marginally below Franklin, with no rent data provided either. The conclusion is straightforward: choose Franklin over its neighbors only if you have local knowledge and deal flow that lets you underwrite what the public data can't, specifically rents and actual vacancy. If you're relying on dataset-level analysis alone, Forrest and Harrison give you more information to work with at a modestly higher price point, and Pike gives you more affordability with a comparable overall score.