Noxubee County

Noxubee County sits at the extreme low end of the price spectrum, with a median home price of $103,230 and a 6.4% year-over-year price decline. That combination of a sub-$104K entry point and falling prices tells you immediately where this market lands: it is not an appreciation play. The appreciation score of 12 out of 100 confirms as much. What you might expect in return is cash flow, but the data here is stark, with cash flow, cap rate, and cash-on-cash return all registering at zero in the current model. The affordability index hits the ceiling at 100, and the county scores 50 overall nationally, landing at the 23rd percentile out of 1,000 counties tracked and 46th out of 80 Mississippi counties. This is a market that looks cheap on the surface and delivers very little in the model.

The investor profile this county suits is narrow and specific. Pure cash-flow buyers will find no modeled return to anchor an underwrite, and appreciation buyers face a market that just lost 6.4% of its value in a single year with an appreciation score of 12. The one investor type who might find something here is a value-add operator willing to buy at steep discounts to force equity through renovation, or someone with deep local knowledge who can underwrite to rents the model doesn't capture. At $103,230 median, individual deals well below that level are plausible, and if an operator can acquire distressed assets at $50,000 to $70,000 and achieve market rents, the math could work. But that requires ground-level sourcing and management capacity in a small, rural county, not a screened list and a property manager in another city.

No economic anchors were provided for Noxubee, so there is nothing concrete to say about the employer base or job stability driving rental demand. What the raw numbers do suggest is that a county of 10,261 people with a median home price that is declining carries real demand-side risk. A small population base means the rental demand pool is thin, tenant turnover has an outsized impact on returns, and any single economic disruption, whether a plant closure or a demographic outflow, can move the needle materially. Concentration risk here is structural, not theoretical.

On carry costs, the monthly tax and insurance figure comes to $113, based on a state-average effective property tax rate of 0.81% and an insurance rate of 0.50%. The tax rate is flagged as normal, which means it is not a drag or a tailwind relative to the national picture. The insurance component at 0.50% is worth noting given Mississippi's exposure to weather events, though this is a state-level estimate. As the data note states, actual county and township rates may differ from these figures, so any live underwrite should pull a county-specific tax bill and get a current insurance quote before committing. That said, at $113 per month combined, the carry costs are low in absolute dollar terms, which is one of the few structural advantages a low-price-point county offers.

The comparison to neighboring counties sharpens the picture. Winston County and Copiah County both score 53 overall versus Noxubee's 50, with median prices of $136,992 and $133,248 respectively. Leflore County scores 51 at a median of $79,565, which is cheaper than Noxubee. Panola County sits at $184,391 with a 51 overall score, and Adams County at $116,847 scores only 46. The meaningful takeaway is that Noxubee is not the cheapest option in the region, Leflore is, and yet Leflore scores higher. Noxubee does not win on price relative to neighbors in a way that compensates for its weaker scores. An investor would choose Noxubee over a neighbor only if they had a specific asset, a specific deal, or hyperlocal expertise that the county-level data cannot reflect. On the numbers alone, Winston or Copiah offer a modestly better composite score for roughly $30,000 to $33,000 more in median price, a gap that may be worth paying for less concentration risk and a slightly more diversified local economy.