Feasibility Study Company Independent Feasibility Analysis

Mississippi · Market Intelligence

Mississippi Feasibility Studies

An independent, lender-grade feasibility practice for Mississippi across SBA 7(a) and 504, USDA Rural Development, EB-5, and conventional capital. This page is our standing, sourced read on where Mississippi markets are oversupplied, how deals actually get funded by region, and where Mississippi feasibility studies fail review.

Request a methodology briefing Jump to the oversupply monitor
$44.9K
Median household income, lowest of all 50 states1
−7.6%
Jackson (Hinds Co.) population change vs. +5.2% in Madison1
$25B
AWS data-center commitment, largest in state history9
1990
Permanent nursing-home-bed moratorium (full-CON state)19
The Mississippi Thesis

A statewide Mississippi number is indefensible.

Mississippi rewards feasibility work and punishes shortcuts. It is the poorest state in the nation — median household income $44,966 with 18.8 percent poverty — yet it contains one of the sharpest intra-state divergences in America, and the decisive fact for underwriting is that the same asset class behaves oppositely across its regions. Population is the clearest proof: the city of Jackson, in Hinds County, lost 7.6 percent of its residents while adjacent Madison County grew 5.2 percent and DeSoto County, in the Memphis suburbs, grew 6.1 percent to about 197,000.12 A single Mississippi capture rate applied across those markets misprices nearly every deal.

The state is also unevenly settled, essentially flat-to-declining near 2.94 million residents while individual counties move in opposite directions — Sharkey County fell 18.2 percent and Quitman 14.1 percent even as the Jackson suburbs and DeSoto expanded.1 Institutional activity concentrates in a handful of regions: the affluent Jackson suburbs, the DeSoto/Memphis logistics arm, the casino-and-shipbuilding Gulf Coast, the Golden Triangle metals cluster, and the university towns — while the depopulating agricultural Delta and much of the rural state carry deep poverty. Jackson is not Madison; the Coast is not the Delta; neither resembles Oxford. We underwrite Mississippi region-by-region, against the current pipeline, the regional funding channel, and the Mississippi-specific factors most studies miss.

What follows is organized as a working desk: a live oversupply monitor, a funding-routing map, the review failures that sink Mississippi studies, the regulatory edges that decide outcomes — the nation's broadest Certificate-of-Need regime, the Jackson water crisis, and the Delta poverty overhang — and a per-region demand fingerprint. Every figure is dated and attributed in the sources below.

The Oversupply & Pipeline Monitor

Where Mississippi markets stand, region by region.

A supply-pressure read for each region and asset class, refreshed each quarter from named primary sources. A dash means we hold no current tracked reading, not that the market is balanced. Data current to Q2 2026.

Supply pressure: Oversupplied Balanced Undersupplied Digesting / softening
Region Multifamily Industrial Office Hotel Retail
Jackson suburbs (Madison/Rankin) BalancedMadison +5.2%; newer stock DigestingAWS build-out BalancedHighland Colony corridor Balanced Balanced
Jackson city (Hinds) OversuppliedHinds −7.6%; ~$934 1-BR Balanced OversuppliedDowntown distress OversuppliedDistressed Oversupplied
DeSoto / North MS BalancedDeSoto +6.1% DigestingHeavy Memphis-South pipeline Balanced Balanced Balanced
Gulf Coast BalancedInsurance drag BalancedIngalls shipbuilding Balanced BalancedGaming-led; $1.59B Balanced
Golden Triangle / Columbus UndersuppliedSteel Dynamics workforce Digesting$2.5B aluminum mill Balanced Undersupplied Balanced
Tupelo / NE MS Balanced BalancedFurniture; Toyota nearby Balanced Balanced Balanced
Oxford / Starkville Digesting~2,700 student beds by 2027 No read Balanced BalancedEvent-driven (SEC) Balanced
Delta Oversuppliedvs. weak demand No read Oversupplied OversuppliedTunica contracting Oversupplied

Readings compiled from sources 1–17 below. Vendor estimates for the same market can differ; where a named metro-level self-storage or broker industrial vacancy series was unavailable this cycle, the cell reflects our qualitative read rather than a vendor figure.

Multifamily: a low-cost, low-supply market with one sharp divergence

Mississippi is a low-cost, generally low-supply, stable multifamily market. Statewide effective rents averaged $1,177 per unit and $1.20 per square foot in Q1 2026, up a modest 1.9 percent year over year, with growth normalizing after outsized earlier-cycle gains.3 Jackson posts the state's highest effective rents at roughly $1,200 per unit on its larger employment base, yet the city core tells the opposite story: one-bedroom asking rents in the city of Jackson sit near $934 per month, among the lowest of any tracked market, as Hinds County's 7.6 percent population loss and the water-crisis overhang weigh on effective demand while the affluent Madison and Rankin suburbs absorb the newer product.341 DeSoto County reads balanced with genuine growth momentum, drawing Memphis-metro spillover into Southaven, Olive Branch, and Hernando against a median household income of $85,297 — nearly double the state median.2

Industrial: the signature asset class, from autos to a $25 billion data-center wave

Industrial is Mississippi's defining asset class. Automotive anchors it: Nissan's Canton plant employs about 5,000 on roughly $4 billion invested and is transitioning to EV production, while Toyota's Blue Springs plant near Tupelo employs 2,400 building the Corolla and added a $125 million hybrid-Corolla line in November 2025.11 DeSoto County functions as the Mississippi arm of the Memphis logistics ecosystem, with 24,000-plus jobs posted and a heavy warehouse pipeline concentrated in Olive Branch — the clearest digestion risk in the state if deliveries outrun absorption.12 The generational additions are the mega-projects: Amazon/AWS has committed $25 billion across Madison, Warren, and Hinds counties, the single largest capital investment in state history, targeting 2,000-plus jobs and initial Madison campuses by 2027; Steel Dynamics' $2.5 billion Aluminum Dynamics mill in Columbus shipped its first coils in June 2025 and targets 75 percent utilization by end-2026; and Compass Datacenters committed a further $10 billion in Meridian.91013 Each is transformative but concentrated, and the feasibility question is the transition from construction-phase to permanent-workforce demand.

Hotels and gaming: a strong Coast, a contracting Tunica

Mississippi's hospitality economy is a tale of two gaming markets. Statewide casino revenue was essentially flat at $2.43 billion in 2025, down 0.1 percent, but the split is decisive: the Gulf Coast generated $1.59 billion, more than 65 percent of the state total and up 0.63 percent, while the Northern/Tunica region fell to $522 million, down 1.88 percent, as competition from Arkansas and Tennessee eroded its Memphis-feeder base.5 Boyd Gaming closed Sam's Town Tunica in September 2025, leaving five casinos in a market that was once a top-tier national destination.7 The state's 26 casinos employ about 16,000 people with $814.4 million in wages and benefits.6 The Coast has added no new casino in a decade and reads balanced and gaming-led; Gulfport short-term-rental data showed roughly $259 ADR, 34.6 percent occupancy, and about $93 RevPAR over June 2025 to May 2026.15 Nationally, U.S. RevPAR fell 0.4 percent in 2025, the first non-pandemic decline since 2009, and the pipeline closed the year at 6,146 projects and 720,089 rooms.16

Shipbuilding, furniture, and student housing

Three anchors round out the map. Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula is the largest manufacturing employer in the state at about 11,000 workers, carries a $45 billion-plus backlog, and raised wages at least 18 percent under a 2026 union agreement — a workforce-housing driver on the Coast.8 Within 50 miles of Tupelo, more upholstered furniture is produced than anywhere in the world, with roughly 6,700 Lee County residents — 34 percent of local manufacturing jobs — across 100-plus companies.14 In Oxford, the University of Mississippi reached a record 28,405 students in fall 2025, its third straight record year, prompting a Greystar public-private partnership to build about 2,700 new beds by 2027 — the state's clearest student-housing digestion story against record demand.17

Senior housing: supply-controlled, but demand-depth-limited

Mississippi's senior-housing constraint is regulatory, not cyclical. Skilled nursing is Certificate-of-Need-gated and frozen under a permanent 1990 bed moratorium, so oversupply risk is very low; the state counted 208 skilled-nursing facilities and 18,274 licensed beds as of FY2016.1819 Assisted living and personal care homes operate under state licensure rather than the moratorium, but deep poverty and payer mix cap private-pay depth: the Medicaid nursing-home eligibility income limit runs about $2,982 per month for a single applicant in 2026, and 18.9 percent of residents lived below poverty in 2024.1923 Mississippi's aging rural population creates genuine need, but the private-pay layer is thin — a distinction a defensible study must draw explicitly.

The Funding-Routing Map

How a Mississippi deal actually gets funded.

Feasibility work exists to satisfy a specific reviewer. Knowing which channel and office funds your asset in your region is half the battle. This is the routing most feasibility pages never publish.

SBA and USDA offices in Mississippi
A single SBA district office covers all 82 counties, with USDA Rural Development administered from Jackson.2728
OfficeCoverage
SBA Mississippi District OfficeStatewide, all 82 counties; offices in Jackson and Gulfport
USDA Rural Development state officeJackson; area offices in Brookhaven, Hattiesburg, Batesville, and Starkville

On the 504 side, Mississippi is served by statewide and regional Certified Development Companies: Three Rivers Local Development Company, in Pontotoc, covers all 82 counties and notably waives the standard 1.5 percent processing fee, while the Central Mississippi Planning & Development District serves the Jackson metro and the Southern Mississippi Planning & Development District serves the Gulf Coast; any "largest CDC" claim is self-reported and unresolved without the SBA data file.27 On the 7(a) side, Mississippi is a low-volume state — roughly $192.3 million across 347 loans in CY2025 — led by Live Oak Banking Company at about $30.6 million across 22 loans, with Cadence Bank, Renasant Bank, Community Bank of Mississippi, and Peoples Bank among the most active; Cadence and Renasant, both Tupelo-based, are the largest Mississippi regionals, and Trustmark, headquartered in Jackson, is active mid-tier.26 For rural credits — nearly the entire state outside the Jackson core — USDA Business and Industry, Community Facilities, and REAP route through the Mississippi Rural Development state office in Jackson.28 The decisive new tool is the July 4, 2026 decoupling of the 7(a) and 504 caps to $10 million combined, the highest in agency history, paired with FY2026 manufacturing fee waivers that sunset September 30, 2026.25

  • Industrial or logistics in DeSoto County / Memphis-SouthSBA 7(a) or 504 via Memphis-South regional lenders or Three Rivers CDC; conventional or CMBS for large distribution.
  • Healthcare or senior housing anywhere in the stateCertificate of Need is the gate; route skilled-nursing only where a statutory moratorium exception exists.
  • Rural, Delta, or agricultural housing, ag-processing, or community facilitiesUSDA Rural Development (Jackson) first — B&I, Community Facilities, REAP.
  • Jackson-suburb (Madison/Rankin) commercial real estateTrustmark, Cadence, or Renasant, paired with CMPDD for the 504.
  • Gulf Coast hospitality or shipbuilding-adjacentHancock Whitney and regional banks, with SMPDD for the 504.
  • Manufacturing (NAICS 31–33) statewideExploit FY2026 SBA manufacturing fee waivers before September 30, 2026 and the $10M decoupled combined cap.
Common Review Failures

How Mississippi feasibility studies fail review.

Each failure below is tied to a real Mississippi number. These are the recurring reasons a Mississippi study loses credibility with a lender or agency, engineered out of our deliverables before they ship.

  1. Statewide-average error

    Applying a blended statewide assumption ignores that Madison County (+5.2 percent) and DeSoto (+6.1 percent) grow while Hinds (−7.6 percent), Sharkey (−18.2 percent), and Quitman (−14.1 percent) collapse, and a statewide median income of $44,966 masks DeSoto's $85,297.12

  2. Jackson water-crisis blindness

    Underwriting Jackson-city real estate without pricing the 2022 O.B. Curtis failure that left 150,000-plus residents without safe water, the federal third-party manager (JXN Water), the February 2026 court-approved 12 percent rate increase, and the October 2026 governance deadline is a signature error.21

  3. Delta demand overstatement

    Applying market-rate absorption to the Delta ignores that it has been the poorest U.S. region since 2001, with employment down 0.6 percent from 2002 to 2022 against national growth of 17.8 percent and Issaquena County at 18.4 percent unemployment.22

  4. Poverty and payer-mix error

    Mississippi is the poorest state (median income $44,966; 18.9 percent poverty), has not expanded Medicaid, and has 36 of 74 rural hospitals at closure risk, so private-pay depth for market-rate multifamily, senior housing, and discretionary retail is thin and must be modeled directly.123

  5. Certificate-of-Need misread

    Treating Mississippi as an open-entry healthcare market is wrong: it runs one of the broadest full-CON regimes in the nation, and skilled-nursing beds are frozen under a permanent 1990 moratorium, so a study that models market-driven skilled-nursing supply is indefensible.1819

  6. Gaming-market misread

    Underwriting gaming-dependent real estate without modeling regional competition ignores Tunica's contraction to $522 million in 2025 and the September 2025 closure of Sam's Town, set against a still-strong Coast at $1.59 billion.57

  7. Coastal windstorm and disaster mispricing

    The Gulf Coast carries severe hurricane and wind-insurance exposure (Katrina in 2005, Sally in 2020), and the state is highly tornado- and flood-prone (the 2023 Rolling Fork tornado). A coastal or Delta pro forma that treats insurance and wind deductibles as a rounding error is not defensible.

Regulatory Edges

The Mississippi rules that decide feasibility outcomes.

Four regulatory realities separate a Mississippi study that survives review from one that does not. The first is the one competitors most often state wrong.

Certificate of Need: one of the broadest full-CON regimes in the nation

Mississippi runs one of the strongest, broadest Certificate-of-Need programs in the country, administered by the Mississippi State Department of Health under Miss. Code § 41-7-171 et seq. CON review spans hospitals and hospital beds, nursing homes and long-term care, ambulatory surgery centers, major medical equipment, home health, and psychiatric facilities.18 Decisively for senior-housing feasibility, a permanent 1990 legislative moratorium prohibits new skilled- and intermediate-nursing-home beds except by narrow statutory exception (15 Miss. Code R. 8-90-02-204.01), so those categories are effectively frozen and oversupply risk is very low — the opposite of non-CON states.19 Modest reforms under HB 3 in the 2025–2026 session raised capital-expenditure thresholds and added flexibility, but sweeping repeal has not been enacted, and the regime remains broad and strict as of Q2 2026.20 A study that treats Mississippi as open-entry on the one axis where a de facto cap applies is wrong.

The Jackson water crisis and city fiscal distress

The city of Jackson's 2022 O.B. Curtis plant failure left more than 150,000 residents without safe drinking water and put the system under a federal court-appointed third-party manager (JXN Water, led by Ted Henifin), backed by $600 million-plus in federal funding.21 A February 2026 court-approved 12 percent rate increase covers a roughly $1.2 million monthly operating shortfall, and an October 2026 deadline governs the transition to a permanent management structure. Combined with Hinds County's 7.6 percent population loss, this is a first-order risk that must be priced into any Jackson-city pro forma — and the reason the affluent Madison and Rankin suburbs, not the city core, carry the region's office, multifamily, and retail demand.1

Poverty, payer mix, and rural-hospital risk

Mississippi is the poorest state, with the lowest median household income in the nation at $44,966 and 18.9 percent of residents below poverty in 2024.123 It has not expanded Medicaid, and 36 of its 74 rural hospitals (54 percent) are at risk of closure, with 23 (34 percent) at immediate risk within two to three years — third-worst nationally.23 For market-rate multifamily, senior housing, and discretionary retail, private-pay depth is a binding constraint across much of the state, and USDA and other subsidized channels frequently carry the demand that market-rate assumptions cannot.

Tailwinds in the sponsor's favor

Three changes cut the other way. The Build Up Mississippi Act (H.B. 1, signed March 27, 2025) puts the individual income tax on a path to elimination — a flat 4.4 percent in 2025 dropping to 4.0 percent in 2026 and 3.0 percent by 2030 — and cut the grocery sales tax from 7 to 5 percent effective July 1, 2025.24 Mega-project incentives from the Mississippi Development Authority anchor AWS, Steel Dynamics, and Compass, and the SBA's July 4, 2026 decoupling raised the combined 7(a)-plus-504 ceiling to $10 million, with FY2026 manufacturing fee waivers through September 30, 2026.925

Region Divergence

Mississippi regions, distinct demand fingerprints.

Each region carries its own economic base and its own supply position. These are the units of analysis for a Mississippi study, and each anchors a dedicated market page.

Capital & eds-and-meds

Jackson Metro (Madison / Rankin / Hinds)

Government, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and the affluent Madison–Rankin suburbs against a distressed Hinds County core; the defining city-vs-suburb divergence, now the site of the AWS mega-campus.19

Memphis logistics

DeSoto County / North Mississippi

Memphis-suburb spillover and warehouse logistics across Southaven, Olive Branch, and Hernando; the state's fastest-growing county at about 197,000 (+6.1 percent) with an $85,297 median household income.212

Gaming, tourism & shipbuilding

Gulf Coast (Gulfport–Biloxi / Pascagoula)

Casinos, tourism, and Ingalls shipbuilding; the Coast generated $1.59 billion in gaming revenue in 2025, and Ingalls is the state's largest manufacturing employer at about 11,000.58

Metals & university

Golden Triangle (Columbus / Starkville)

Steel Dynamics' $2.5 billion aluminum mill and Mississippi State University; workforce and support-industrial product read undersupplied against the buildout.10

Furniture & automotive

Tupelo / Northeast Mississippi

The world's densest upholstered-furniture cluster plus Toyota's nearby Blue Springs plant; roughly 6,700 Lee County furniture workers across 100-plus companies.1411

University & student housing

Oxford / Lafayette County

The University of Mississippi at a record 28,405 students in fall 2025; the state's clearest student-housing digestion story against a roughly 2,700-bed pipeline through 2027.17

Row-crop ag & Tunica

The Delta

Row-crop agriculture, catfish, and the contracting Tunica gaming market; the poorest U.S. region since 2001, sharply depopulating, and oversupplied relative to demand across asset classes.522

University & healthcare

Hattiesburg / Pine Belt & Meridian

The University of Southern Mississippi, healthcare, and the $10 billion Compass data center in Meridian anchor thinner but steadier South and East Mississippi markets; we build these studies with primary local research.13

By Asset Class

Mississippi feasibility studies by asset class.

Each asset class carries its own Mississippi demand drivers, from Gulf Coast gaming and shipbuilding to Memphis-South logistics to the full-CON healthcare gate. Explore the analytical approach by property type.

Mississippi Questions

Mississippi feasibility study questions.

Does Mississippi require a feasibility study for an SBA loan?

Under SBA SOP 50 10 8, a feasibility study is discretionary rather than universally mandated, and lenders commonly require one for special-purpose properties and startup or ground-up projects that lack operating history. Mississippi's economy leans on special-purpose collateral — hotels and casinos, industrial and manufacturing, and senior housing — so feasibility analysis is frequently expected on Mississippi SBA credits.

Does Mississippi have a Certificate of Need law?

Yes. Mississippi runs one of the broadest full Certificate-of-Need regimes in the nation, administered by the Mississippi State Department of Health under Miss. Code § 41-7-171 et seq., covering hospitals, nursing homes, ambulatory surgery centers, major medical equipment, home health, and psychiatric facilities. A permanent 1990 moratorium freezes new skilled-nursing beds except by narrow statutory exception, so healthcare-facility oversupply risk is very low.

Which Mississippi real estate markets are oversupplied right now?

As of Q2 2026, the sharpest oversupply is in the city of Jackson (Hinds County) and the depopulating Delta, where multifamily, office, retail, and hotels all read oversupplied relative to demand. The affluent Jackson suburbs, DeSoto County, the Gulf Coast, and the Golden Triangle read balanced to undersupplied, and industrial is digesting heavy pipelines in DeSoto and around the AWS and Steel Dynamics mega-projects.

How does Mississippi's poverty and payer mix affect feasibility?

Mississippi is the poorest state, with median household income of $44,966 and 18.9 percent poverty in 2024, and it has not expanded Medicaid. Private-pay depth for market-rate multifamily, senior housing, and discretionary retail is thin across much of the state, and 36 of 74 rural hospitals are at closure risk, so a defensible study distinguishes genuine demographic need from bankable private-pay demand and routes rural deals through USDA.

Who funds SBA and USDA loans in Mississippi?

A single SBA Mississippi District Office covers all 82 counties from offices in Jackson and Gulfport. 504 credits route through CDCs such as Three Rivers Local Development Company (statewide), CMPDD (Jackson metro), and SMPDD (Gulf Coast), while Live Oak Bank led Mississippi 7(a) dollar volume in CY2025 and Cadence and Renasant are the top in-state regionals. USDA Business and Industry loans route through the Mississippi Rural Development state office in Jackson.

How is a Mississippi feasibility study different from a national one?

Mississippi is too internally divergent for statewide assumptions; the same asset class is oversupplied in the city of Jackson and the Delta while balanced or undersupplied in the suburbs, DeSoto County, and the Golden Triangle. A defensible Mississippi study is built region-by-region against the current supply pipeline, the regional funding channel, and Mississippi-specific factors most studies miss: the nation's broadest Certificate-of-Need regime, the Jackson water crisis, and the Delta poverty overhang.

Underwriting a Mississippi project? Start with the market read.

A methodology briefing walks through the analytical framework, the deliverable composition, and the current Mississippi market data for your region and asset class — including the Certificate-of-Need, Jackson water-crisis, and poverty-and-payer-mix factors that decide Mississippi outcomes.

Request a methodology briefing
Sources

Data sources and dates.

Every figure on this page traces to a named authority. Real-estate readings are point-in-time and vendor-dependent; each is attributed at its point of use.

  1. World Population Review, Mississippi data (2025 and 2026), citing U.S. Census Bureau: median household income $44,966; 18.8% poverty; county population change (Hinds −7.6%, Madison +5.2%, Sharkey −18.2%, Quitman −14.1%); statewide population approximately 2.94 million.
  2. U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 Population Estimates and American Community Survey 2024: DeSoto County approximately 197,000 (+6.1%), median household income $85,297; Rankin County approximately 158,854; Jackson County approximately 145,249; Issaquena County 1,338 (−4.9% since 2010).
  3. Cushman & Wakefield, Mississippi Multifamily Report (Q1 2026): statewide effective rents $1,177 per unit and $1.20 per square foot, up 1.9% year over year; Jackson highest at roughly $1,200 per unit; peak market vacancy 11.5%.
  4. Apartments.com / CoStar, Jackson rent data (August 2025): city of Jackson one-bedroom asking rent approximately $934 per month.
  5. Mississippi Gaming Commission, 2025 revenue data: statewide casino revenue $2.43 billion (−0.1%); Coastal region $1.59 billion (+0.63%); Northern/Tunica region $522 million (−1.88%).
  6. Mississippi Business Journal, citing MGHA Executive Director Larry Gregory and MGC Executive Director Jay McDaniel (2025): 26 casinos, approximately 16,000 employees, $814.4 million in wages and benefits; cumulative Gulf Coast gaming investment $2,938,866,074 of a $6.9 billion state total.
  7. Mississippi Today, Tunica gaming (2025): Boyd Gaming closed Sam's Town Tunica in September 2025, leaving five casinos.
  8. Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) Form 10-K (February 2026); Ingalls Shipbuilding via WLOX (March 2026): Pascagoula approximately 11,000 employees, the largest manufacturing employer in the state, $45 billion-plus backlog; 2026 union agreement raised wages at least 18%.
  9. Amazon and Mississippi Development Authority (January 2024 and April 2025); DataCenterDynamics (2025): AWS $25 billion data-center commitment across Madison, Warren (Vicksburg), and Hinds (Clinton) counties, the single largest capital investment in state history; 2,000-plus jobs; initial Madison campuses targeted for 2027.
  10. The Dispatch, "Aluminum Dynamics celebrates soft opening" (2025); WREG/AP (2022): Steel Dynamics' Aluminum Dynamics mill in Columbus, $2.5 billion (approximately $247 million in state incentives), roughly 1,000 jobs at approximately $93,000 average salary, first coils shipped June 2025, targeting 75% utilization by end-2026.
  11. Toyota (November 18, 2025); Nissan and Mississippi Development Authority via Site Selection (2023): Toyota Blue Springs 2,400 workers, $1.3 billion invested, $125 million November 2025 hybrid-Corolla expansion; Nissan Canton approximately 5,000 workers, approximately $4 billion invested, transitioning to EV production.
  12. Indeed job-posting data (June 2026): DeSoto County 24,000-plus jobs posted, with warehouse and order-picker concentration in Olive Branch.
  13. Site Selection (January 2025): Compass Datacenters $10 billion commitment in Lauderdale County (Meridian).
  14. Community Development Foundation of Northeast Mississippi; St. Louis Fed Regional Economist: within 50 miles of Tupelo, more upholstered furniture is produced than anywhere in the world; approximately 6,700 Lee County furniture workers (34% of manufacturing jobs) across 100-plus companies.
  15. AirROI, Gulfport short-term-rental data (June 2025–May 2026): approximately $259 ADR, 34.6% occupancy, approximately $93 RevPAR.
  16. CoStar / STR and Lodging Econometrics (2025; Winter 2025/2026): U.S. RevPAR −0.4% in 2025, the first non-pandemic annual decline since 2009; U.S. pipeline 6,146 projects / 720,089 rooms at Q4 2025.
  17. University of Mississippi (November 2024 and November 2025); Daily Mississippian (2025): Ole Miss enrollment 27,124 (fall 2024, +11%) and a record 28,405 (fall 2025, +4.7%), a third straight record year; Greystar public-private partnership building approximately 2,700 beds by 2027.
  18. Mississippi State Department of Health, State Health Plan and Miss. Code § 41-7-171 et seq.: full Certificate-of-Need regime; 208 skilled-nursing facilities / 18,274 licensed beds (FY2016).
  19. 15 Miss. Code R. 8-90-02-204.01; Institute for Justice; Miss. Code §§ 41-7-188, 41-7-191, 41-7-193: permanent 1990 nursing-home-bed moratorium, CON review thresholds and fees, and the 2026 Medicaid nursing-home income limit of approximately $2,982 per month for a single applicant.
  20. Mississippi Today, SuperTalk, and Mississippi Center for Public Policy (2025–2026): HB 3 Certificate-of-Need reforms; the 2024 gubernatorial veto; sweeping repeal not enacted as of Q2 2026.
  21. U.S. EPA (2026); WaterVerge (2026); Mississippi Free Press (2025–2026): Jackson's 2022 O.B. Curtis water-system failure (150,000-plus residents), federal court-appointed third-party manager (JXN Water / Ted Henifin), $600 million-plus in federal funding, February 2026 court-approved 12% rate increase covering a roughly $1.2 million monthly shortfall, October 2026 governance deadline.
  22. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2023–2024); U.S. Census Bureau (2020): the Mississippi Delta has been the poorest U.S. region since 2001; Delta employment −0.6% (2002–2022) against national +17.8%; Issaquena County 18.4% unemployment and $687 average weekly wage.
  23. Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, via Becker's Hospital Review (December 2025); Mississippi Department of Employment Security (2024): 36 of 74 rural hospitals (54%) at closure risk, 23 (34%) at immediate risk within 2–3 years, third-worst nationally; Medicaid not expanded; 18.9% poverty in 2024.
  24. Build Up Mississippi Act (H.B. 1, signed March 27, 2025); Tax Foundation, Thomson Reuters, and National Taxpayers Union (2025): individual income tax 4.4% (2025) to 4.0% (2026) to 3.0% (2030) on a path to elimination; grocery sales tax cut 7% to 5% (July 1, 2025); 7% state sales tax.
  25. SBA Policy Notice 5000-879058 (dated May 18, 2026; effective July 4, 2026); NAGGL (2026): combined 7(a)-plus-504 cap of $10 million (individual caps $5 million / $5 million, $5.5 million for small manufacturers), 7(a) approved first; FY2026 manufacturing fee waivers sunset September 30, 2026; SBA FYE25 record 78,078 7(a) loans / $37.3 billion.
  26. SBA loan-level FOIA data via GoSBA Loans (CY2025): Mississippi 7(a) lenders led by Live Oak Banking Company ($30.6 million / 22 loans), with Cadence Bank, Renasant Bank, Community Bank of Mississippi, and Peoples Bank among the most active; Mississippi approximately $192.3 million across 347 loans in CY2025.
  27. U.S. Small Business Administration, Mississippi District Office (Jackson and Gulfport); Three Rivers Local Development Company, CMPDD, and SMPDD public disclosures; SBA 504 CDC data via data.sba.gov.
  28. USDA Rural Development, Mississippi state office, Jackson (2026), State Director Dane Maxwell; area offices in Brookhaven, Hattiesburg, Batesville, and Starkville.