Long Beach, MS: An Honest Investment Outlook

What the Price Data Actually Shows -- and Its Limits

Long Beach shows two different price signals depending on the source. Zillow's own home-value index puts the citywide average at $237,256 as of June 30, 2026, up a modest 0.6% over the prior year -- a slow, steady read. Redfin's transaction-based figures, drawn from actual closed sales, show a materially hotter market: a $295,000 median sale price in March 2026, up 10.9% year-over-year, and $154 per square foot, up 8.5% year-over-year; a separate snapshot put the median list price at $297,000 in May 2026. That's a real divergence worth sitting with rather than averaging away: Zillow's smoothed valuation model reflects the entire housing stock including homes that haven't traded recently, while Redfin's figure reflects only what actually closed -- and when the transaction-based median runs well above the stock-wide average, it often means the properties currently selling (newer construction, rebuilt post-Katrina homes, renovated stock) are pulling the closed-sale median up faster than the broader valuation of older housing is moving.

The honest read for an investor: Long Beach's underlying home values may be appreciating only modestly on a whole-market basis (Zillow's +0.6%), while the specific slice of homes actually transacting recently is appreciating much faster (Redfin's +10.9%) -- which is a genuinely different investment thesis depending on whether you're buying existing older stock or newer/renovated product. This research did not find a Long Beach-specific, multi-year (5- or 10-year) appreciation index from a primary source like FHFA; the figures above are single-year snapshots, not a long-run trend line.

How That Compares to Mississippi and National Benchmarks

Statewide, Mississippi home prices are reported up roughly 3.5% over the past year and about 42.5% over the past five years, per aggregator data compiled in 2026 -- a meaningfully slower pace than many Sun Belt states have posted over the same window, consistent with Mississippi's generally lower cost-of-living and lower-growth reputation relative to Florida, the Carolinas, or Texas. This research could not pull a precise 10-year FHFA House Price Index figure for Mississippi specifically this session (the FHFA and YCharts pages tracking that index were not directly accessible), so no longer-run statewide comparison is offered here beyond the 1-year and 5-year figures above -- that's a genuine gap, not a rounded-off estimate. For national context, U.S. home prices have very roughly doubled over the decade-plus leading into the mid-2020s, with a meaningful share of that gain concentrated in the pandemic-era 2020-2022 window; set against that, Mississippi's +42.5% five-year figure runs below a typical national five-year pace, while Long Beach's own Redfin-reported +10.9% single-year figure runs well above both the state's +3.5% one-year figure and typical recent national one-year appreciation -- another sign that Long Beach's currently-transacting slice of homes may be moving faster than the broader Mississippi or Harrison County market around it.

Rental Income: A Long-Term Character, an Unsettled Short-Term Picture

Long Beach's rental case rests more plausibly on long-term rental to the Gulfport-Biloxi metro's working population -- USM Gulf Park faculty, staff, and students; casino, hospitality, and Keesler Air Force Base-adjacent employment in Biloxi; and the broader Harrison County job market -- than on a dense, walk-to-the-strip vacation-rental economy the way Biloxi's or Gulfport's beachfront corridors run. On the short-term-rental side, Mississippi imposes no statewide STR licensing framework; individual cities and counties regulate independently, and neighboring Gulf Coast cities show real variation -- Gulfport requires a permit through its Urban Development department plus liability insurance minimums, Ocean Springs requires host registration, and Bay St. Louis began full enforcement of its own registration ordinance on January 1, 2025. This research did not confirm whether Long Beach itself currently has a specific short-term-rental ordinance on its books -- search results returned results that could not be reliably distinguished from Long Beach, California's separate and unrelated STR rules, so no claim about Long Beach, Mississippi's own STR policy is made here either way. Anyone underwriting a Long Beach purchase on assumed short-term-rental income should confirm the city's current zoning and permitting rules directly with Long Beach City Hall before relying on that income.

Risk Factors Worth Weighing Before Timing a Purchase

Three real, sourced risk factors belong on this page rather than buried in a disclaimer. First, and most fundamentally: Long Beach's own hurricane track record is not hypothetical. Hurricane Katrina's storm surge, estimated at roughly 25.7-28 feet depending on the exact measurement point, flattened much of the city on August 29, 2005, demolishing 715 single-family homes and killing 6 people in Long Beach alone -- a severity broadly comparable to what neighboring Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, and Waveland experienced, not a lesser version of it. Fifteen years later, Hurricane Zeta's 8.2-foot storm surge separately destroyed Long Beach's own small-craft harbor in October 2020, requiring a multi-year, federally-funded ($2.18 million GOMESA grant) rebuild that was still under construction into 2025. That's two separate, documented, direct hits to this specific city within twenty years, not a generic "hurricanes happen on the Gulf Coast" disclaimer. Second, insurance cost trajectory: the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association -- the state wind pool that many coastal Harrison County properties depend on for windstorm coverage -- is raising rates 16% effective January 1, 2026, a confirmed, current increase layered on top of whatever a property's existing premium already reflects; the state's own response, the relaunched Strengthen Mississippi Homes mitigation-grant program (up to $15,000 per home for FORTIFIED-roof retrofits, statewide as of July 1, 2026), is worth investigating as a partial offset but does not eliminate the underlying cost pressure. Third, infrastructure dependency: Long Beach's beach itself is an engineered, Army Corps-built and Harrison County Sand Beach Authority-maintained feature rather than a naturally self-sustaining shoreline, meaning its long-term condition depends on continued public maintenance funding rather than natural dune dynamics -- a structural dependency worth understanding rather than a reason to avoid the market outright.

None of these three factors is disqualifying, and Long Beach's own multi-decade recovery -- population back near its pre-Katrina peak, a rebuilt harbor, a functioning university campus, and home-price appreciation that in the most recent transaction data is running ahead of the statewide pace -- is itself real, sourced evidence that the market has substantially healed. But a buyer weighing a multi-year hold here should price genuine, repeat storm exposure and a rising wind-pool premium environment into that hold from day one, not discover either after closing.

Bottom Line

Long Beach presents a genuinely two-sided picture: a slow-moving, modest +0.6% year-over-year citywide average value (Zillow) sitting alongside a much hotter +10.9% year-over-year median sale price on actual closed transactions (Redfin), inside a state posting a comparatively modest +3.5% one-year and +42.5% five-year statewide pace. Layered underneath both figures is a real, twice-documented hurricane and storm-surge history (Katrina in 2005, Zeta's harbor damage in 2020) and a wind-pool insurance market currently raising rates 16%, alongside a state that fully exempts retirement income and just cut both its income-tax rate and its grocery sales tax. This page is informational only. It is not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice, and nothing here should be used as the sole basis for a purchase or investment decision -- talk to a local real estate agent, a financial advisor, and a licensed Mississippi insurance professional, and pull your own current comps, before making that call.