St. Tammany Parish, LA

St. Tammany Parish’s underwriting tension is a modestly softer Zillow value signal alongside firmer published asking rent, leaving a positive headline yield that must carry taxes and hurricane exposure. Income-oriented buyers should investigate lease-level durability; buyers relying on near-term value gains should be cautious. In Zillow’s 2026-06 county reading, median home value was $287,552, down 0.82% year over year, while median asking rent was $1,544, up 1.68%; supplied gross yield was 6.44% before costs.

That yield uses measured market asking rent, not HUD Fair Market Rent. HUD’s two-bedroom FMR is $1,331, a payment standard; market rent is 116% of it, but FMR cannot substitute for lease rent or yield. The effective property-tax rate is 0.71%, with median annual tax of $2,028. Modeled expected annual climate loss is 0.49% of building value and the dominant hazard is hurricane, so an underwriter needs property-specific insurance, deductibles, elevation and repair assumptions before treating gross yield as cash flow.

Price evidence is mixed rather than a unified trend. FHFA’s 2025 annual repeat-transaction HPI rose 2.03%, whereas Zillow’s cited home-value observation declined; these methods and vintages cannot be averaged. Realtor.com’s 2026-06 MLS listing market showed median asking prices down 0.50% year over year and 23.52% of listings price-reduced. Those are seller-side listing and concession measures, not closed-sale pricing or independent proof of buyer demand; the reported pending-to-active ratio adds only a listing-market competition indicator.

Migration and workplace evidence add demand context but do not establish tenant demand. More tax-return households moved in than out, and inbound movers’ average AGI exceeded outbound movers’ average. QCEW reports rising annual covered workplace employment and average weekly wages; it is neither resident employment nor an unemployment forecast, and Trade, transportation, and utilities is only the largest disclosed private supersector. Non-occupant mortgages were a minority of all purchases, so investor competition is present but not dominant. Missing lease-up, vacancy, operating-cost, insurance-quote, sale-price and property-level flood evidence prevents a debt-service, net-yield, resale-price or hazard-cost conclusion.