Hattiesburg apartment demand comes from a city where renters outnumber owners: about 63% of households rent, according to Census Bureau estimates. That renter base is supported by two universities, a regional medical economy anchored by Forrest General Hospital and Hattiesburg Clinic, and the Camp Shelby training site, while population growth in the wider metro has shifted toward suburban Lamar County.
For owners of apartment buildings and investors who are studying the Pine Belt, the useful question is not simply whether people rent in Hattiesburg, but who those renters are, what they can pay and where new competition is coming from. The sections below answer each of those questions using federal, university and employer sources.
Hattiesburg apartment demand starts with a renter-majority city
The Census Bureau’s QuickFacts profile for Hattiesburg puts the city’s population at 48,802 as of July 1, 2025, almost unchanged from an April 2020 estimates base of 48,723. The headline housing figure is the owner-occupied housing unit rate, which was 37.2% for 2020 to 2024. In other words, close to two of every three occupied homes in the city are rented.
Several other figures from the same profile explain why:
- Households: 20,659, with an average of 2.14 persons per household, which points to a large number of one- and two-person households that typically rent apartments.
- Median household income: $46,342 in 2024 dollars for 2020 to 2024.
- Persons in poverty: 28.3%, a figure that is inflated in college towns because many full-time students report little income.
- Bachelor’s degree or higher: 37.3% of residents age 25 and older.
- Median value of owner-occupied homes: $165,900.
- Median gross rent: $1,005 for 2020 to 2024.
Put those numbers together and a picture emerges. Hattiesburg is a regional service and education center with a young, mobile and partly student population, a sizable professional workforce in medicine and higher education, and a household income profile that keeps a large share of residents in the rental market. At the city’s median gross rent and median household income, a household paying the median rent spends roughly 26% of income on housing costs, a ratio that sits within the range most property managers use when screening applicants.
Two universities and a medical school in the renter pool
Higher education is the most visible source of renters. The University of Southern Mississippi’s main campus is in Hattiesburg, and the university’s 2024 to 2025 Common Data Set reports 10,193 undergraduates and 11,624 students in total for fall 2024. Students who move out of residence halls after their first year, along with graduate students, form a steady pool of apartment renters in the neighborhoods around campus.
William Carey University is the second institution. In a September 2025 university news release, William Carey reported a record fall enrollment of more than 5,140 graduate and undergraduate students, or just over 6,000 including high school dual-enrollment students, across its Hattiesburg, Tradition and Baton Rouge campuses. The same release says its College of Osteopathic Medicine welcomed a class of 200 medical students and describes it as the largest medical school in Mississippi. The university also bought 107 undeveloped acres next to its Hattiesburg campus for future expansion.
Medical students matter to apartment owners for a specific reason. Unlike many undergraduates, they tend to stay in one place for several years, often prefer one- and two-bedroom units without roommates, and are less likely to leave for summer. A rising medical school class adds a type of renter that supports longer lease terms and steadier occupancy.
What student demand means for operations
Student-oriented buildings do have operating patterns that owners should plan around:
- Lease cycles cluster around the academic calendar, which concentrates turnover and make-ready work in late spring and summer.
- Guarantors and co-signers are common, so screening procedures need to account for parental income.
- Furnished units, roommate matching and by-the-bedroom leasing can command premiums but add management work.
- Graduate and professional students behave more like young professionals than undergraduates, which is why proximity to both campuses and the medical district can broaden a building’s appeal.
Healthcare: the largest employment pillar in the Pine Belt
Healthcare is the other half of the Hattiesburg demand story. The Area Development Partnership’s regional overview, published by the local economic development organization, lists healthcare as the area’s largest employment pillar with 11,375 employees, ahead of education with 6,829, manufacturing with 4,837 and the military with 1,800.
Three institutions account for much of that healthcare employment:
- Forrest General Hospital, according to the Forrest Health system, is a 547-bed acute care hospital and Level II Trauma Center serving patients across South Mississippi and the Pine Belt region.
- Hattiesburg Clinic describes itself as the state’s largest multi-specialty clinic, with more than 450 physicians and providers and more than 2,500 professional staff employees.
- Merit Health Wesley is the third hospital system that the Area Development Partnership names among the area’s healthcare employers.
Healthcare jobs create a broad mix of rental demand. Nurses, technicians, therapists and support staff often rent while they establish themselves in the area, resident physicians and fellows rent for the length of their training, and shift work makes short commutes valuable. Apartment buildings within a reasonable drive of the hospital and clinic campuses benefit from that demand regardless of where the academic calendar stands.
Camp Shelby and the military presence
Hattiesburg’s third distinctive demand driver is Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center. The Mississippi National Guard’s Camp Shelby installation page says the post encompasses more than 134,000 acres, mainly in Perry and Forrest counties with a small portion in Greene County, and hosts as many as 100,000 National Guard and Reserve personnel annually for training. The Area Development Partnership credits the post with more than 1,000 personnel.
Most visiting trainees stay on post for short periods, so Camp Shelby is not a source of conventional 12-month leases on the same scale as a large active-duty base. Its value to apartment owners is in the permanent workforce, civilian contractors and support businesses that operate around the installation, and in the relatively stable federal and state spending it brings to the local economy. Owners should treat it as a stabilizing factor rather than as the primary source of tenants.
Jobs and the regional labor market
Employer counts describe the anchors, but monthly labor data shows how the whole metro is performing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Economy at a Glance page for the Hattiesburg metro reports preliminary September 2026 estimates of 68,300 nonfarm jobs and an unemployment rate of 3.0%. Within that total, government accounted for 15,100 jobs, trade, transportation and utilities for 13,600, leisure and hospitality for 8,600 and manufacturing for 4,200.
The month-by-month figures are just as useful to an apartment owner as the totals. Between April and September 2026, government employment, which includes public universities and schools, slipped from 15,000 in April to 14,300 in July before rebounding to 15,100 in September. The unemployment rate moved in the opposite direction, rising from 2.9% in April to 3.8% in June and falling back to 3.0% by September. That seasonal swing mirrors the academic calendar and is a reminder that summer is the softest leasing period for buildings that depend on students and school employees, even in a metro where overall employment is steady.
City and suburbs: why Lamar County growth matters
Hattiesburg’s own population has been essentially flat since 2020, but the metro area has not stood still. HUD’s fair market rent documentation defines the Hattiesburg metropolitan statistical area as Forrest, Lamar and Perry counties. The Census Bureau’s county estimates show a clear split between the two largest counties:
- Lamar County grew from an April 2020 base of 64,218 to 67,403 on July 1, 2025, a 5.0% increase. Its owner-occupied rate is 69.5%, and median gross rent for 2020 to 2024 was $1,126.
- Forrest County, where Hattiesburg is the county seat, grew from 78,166 to 79,034, a 1.1% increase. Its owner-occupied rate is 57.2%, and median gross rent was $972.
Lamar County’s median gross rent is about 16% higher than Forrest County’s, and its population grew more than four times as fast in percentage terms. Lamar County, which borders the city to the west, combines faster growth with a much higher owner-occupancy rate, while the urban core keeps its role as the rental center. For apartment owners in the city, that has two implications. First, the renter base inside Hattiesburg depends heavily on institutions, students and early-career workers rather than on overall population growth. Second, newer suburban rental product, which commands higher rents, competes for the higher-income renters who might otherwise lease the best units in town.
Rent levels: Census medians and HUD fair market rents
Two federal data sources give a reasonable sense of rent levels. The first is the Census median gross rent, $1,005 in the city for 2020 to 2024, which includes utilities paid by tenants and reflects a five-year survey period. The second is HUD’s fiscal year 2026 fair market rents for the Hattiesburg metro, which set payment standards for the Housing Choice Voucher program.
The FY2026 fair market rents for the Hattiesburg metro are:
- Efficiency: $766, compared with $851 in FY2025.
- One bedroom: $888, compared with $952.
- Two bedrooms: $1,047, compared with $1,143.
- Three bedrooms: $1,348, compared with $1,456.
- Four bedrooms: $1,386, compared with $1,515.
Every unit size moved lower from FY2025 to FY2026. The two-bedroom figure fell by about 8.4% and the one-bedroom figure by about 6.7%. Fair market rents are estimates built from survey data and adjustment factors, so a decline does not necessarily mean that market rents fell by the same amount, but it does matter in practice. Owners who rent to voucher holders may see lower payment standards when the local housing authority updates its schedule, and investors underwriting a building with a large share of voucher tenants should check current payment standards rather than relying on last year’s figures.
New supply: the Village at the Beverly and what it signals
New construction inside the city has been modest compared with fast-growing Sun Belt metros, and much of the visible activity has been income-restricted housing. The clearest example is the Village at the Beverly, built by the nonprofit Gulf Coast Housing Partnership on the former site of the Beverly Drive-In Theater. According to a January 2026 announcement from Gulf Coast Housing Partnership, the first phase contains 52 units and the second 40, and construction began on a third and final phase of 30 apartments that is expected to be finished in early 2027. The third phase serves households earning at or below 60% of area median income, with four units set aside for people with disabilities, and is financed largely with 9% low-income housing tax credits and HOME funds.
Projects like this add quality affordable units, which can draw tenants from older, lower-rent private buildings. Owners of older Class C properties in Hattiesburg should expect tenants to compare their units against new tax-credit apartments with modern finishes, and should weigh renovation plans with that comparison in mind.
Practical takeaways for Hattiesburg building owners
Hattiesburg is a market where the tenant base is defined by institutions more than by population growth. A few practical points follow from the data:
- Location relative to Southern Miss, William Carey and the medical district is a primary driver of leasing velocity. Buildings that can serve both students and healthcare workers have a broader tenant pool than those that rely on one group.
- Lease timing deserves attention. Staggering lease expirations away from the May to August student peak can reduce vacancy loss and make-ready crunches.
- Unit mix matters. One- and two-bedroom units align with the city’s 2.14-person average household size and with medical students and young professionals.
- Voucher-heavy buildings should be underwritten with the lower FY2026 fair market rents in mind.
- Suburban growth in Lamar County is real, so in-town properties compete on convenience, price and walkability to campuses and hospitals rather than on newness.
Questions to ask when underwriting a Hattiesburg building
Because demand here is tied so closely to a handful of institutions, the due diligence questions are more specific than in a diversified metro. Investors reviewing a building can ask:
- What share of current tenants are students, and how many leases expire between May and August? A rent roll with heavy summer expirations needs a higher vacancy allowance than one with staggered dates.
- How many units are leased to Housing Choice Voucher holders, and what payment standard does each lease assume? With FY2026 fair market rents lower than FY2025 across every bedroom size, contract rents on renewal may need to be rechecked.
- How far is the building from the Southern Miss campus, William Carey and the main hospital and clinic campuses, and is the drive realistic for shift workers?
- Which newer properties, including income-restricted projects such as the Village at the Beverly, compete for the same tenants, and how do their finishes and rents compare?
- How have occupancy and collections behaved in past summers, when the BLS data shows local unemployment rising and school-related employment dipping?
Answers to those questions usually explain more about a Hattiesburg building’s future performance than any citywide average or regional headline.
When modeling a building, owners can test how those factors flow through to income with our NOI calculator, adjusting vacancy for student turnover and rents for current voucher payment standards. For broader context on the state, see our Mississippi market overview, and owners thinking about an exit can read more about selling an apartment building in Hattiesburg.
The broader point is that Hattiesburg’s renter-majority profile is structural. As long as Southern Miss, William Carey, the city’s hospitals and clinics, and Camp Shelby remain the region’s economic anchors, the city will continue to house a large population of students, trainees and healthcare workers, and the apartment buildings that serve them well will remain in demand.
