Pull up four different sites for Long Beach and you'll get four different numbers for what a home here costs. One says values are basically flat. Another says prices jumped double digits in a year. A third puts homes moving in a month and a half. A fourth says the same homes sit for over three months. None of these sites made an error. They're each describing a different slice of the same town, and if you're comparing Long Beach to Gulfport or Pass Christian or Bay St. Louis right now, that difference matters more than any single headline number.
Here's what's actually happening under the numbers, and why it changes how you should read a Long Beach listing.
Three Numbers, One Town
As of June 2026, Zillow's home value index for Long Beach sat at $237,256, up just 0.6 percent over the previous year. That index is built to estimate the value of the entire existing housing stock, including homes that haven't sold in years.
Redfin tells a different story. In March 2026, the median price of homes that actually closed in Long Beach was $295,000, up 10.9 percent year over year, with 33 homes sold that month versus 25 the year before.
Homes.com lands in between: a trailing 12-month median sale price of $288,550, up 3 percent from the prior 12 months. Movoto's May 2026 snapshot puts the median list price at $297,000, with homes sitting a median of 101 days before selling, unchanged from a year earlier.
| Source | What it measures | Figure | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zillow home value index | Estimated value across the entire existing housing stock | $237,256, up 0.6% year over year | June 2026 |
| Redfin | Median price of homes that actually closed | $295,000, up 10.9% year over year | March 2026 |
| Homes.com | Trailing 12-month median sale price | $288,550, up 3% | mid-2026 |
| Movoto | Median list price, active listings | $297,000, 101 days on market | May 2026 |
Even the days-on-market figures don't agree. Movoto's 101 days sits far from Redfin's reported 81-day average and Homes.com's 45-day median. A buyer treating any one of these as the definitive Long Beach market is comparing a citywide average to a slice of it without knowing which slice.
Where the Higher Number Is Coming From
The gap between Zillow's flat index and everyone else's rising median has a straightforward explanation, and it comes from Long Beach's own mayor.
Speaking to a local television station in June 2026, Mayor Tim Pierce said the city has seen roughly 750 homes built in the past three years. That is not a rounding error in a town of Long Beach's size. New construction communities like Bear Point, built by DSLD Homes in what locals call the Friendly City, along with Harbor View, White Harbor, Buena Vista Heights, and Pelican Cove Town, have been adding inventory that didn't exist a few years ago. Builder listings across the city's new home communities span from about $160,990 at the entry level up to $640,900 for larger four- and five-bedroom plans.
When a meaningful share of a small city's transactions are new builds priced above the older housing stock around them, the median of what actually sold climbs faster than the estimated value of everything that already exists. That's the whole gap in one sentence. Zillow's index is weighted toward decades of existing homes that haven't moved much in value. Redfin and Homes.com are weighted toward whatever actually closed, and lately that includes a wave of new construction priced at a premium to the older stock around it.
If you're comparing Long Beach's "median" to a neighboring coastal town, ask which kind of median you're looking at. A city with less new construction volume will show a cleaner, more stable number. Long Beach's number is genuinely two markets pressed into one statistic.
The Corridor That Isn't In Any of These Numbers Yet
There's a second story sitting underneath the citywide data, and it hasn't shown up in any portal's median yet because it's still under construction.
Long Beach Harbor has been undergoing FEMA-funded fortification, work intended to let the harbor withstand storms without the repeat damage-and-rebuild cycle the city has dealt with in the past. Running alongside it, the city's Gateway Project, a hub meant to serve tourism and beach access at the harbor's west end, was reported in June 2026 to be just weeks from completion.
In May 2026, developer Bellamare Development pitched the Board of Aldermen on a mixed-use project called the West Wall at the Gateway, proposed for the harbor's east side with retail space, food trucks, a playground, and public restrooms. The board voted to move into lease negotiations with the developer that same month.
Mayor Pierce has been direct about what this is doing to interest in the surrounding land. Discussing the harbor's progress in April 2026, he said the momentum has attracted investors looking at development around the harbor and "at the end of Jeff Davis," the avenue running from downtown toward the water.
That kind of investor attention around a specific corridor doesn't move a citywide median. It shows up first as land and building interest concentrated on particular blocks, well before enough transactions accumulate to bend a Redfin or Zillow number. The harbor's full reopening was targeted for the first quarter of 2027 as of that April reporting, and the city was still about $3.5 million short of full project funding even after a $1.5 million infusion from the state's Gulf Coast Restoration Fund earlier in 2026. In other words, the catalyst is real and already drawing money, but it's not finished, and it's not priced into the numbers you'll see on a portal search today.
The Carrying Cost No Median Captures
There's a third layer that matters just as much as purchase price, and it never appears in any of the figures above: what it costs to keep the home insured after you own it.
Mississippi coastal property owners saw windpool rates through the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association rise 16 percent starting January 1, 2026, according to the state's insurance commissioner. That's the wind and hail coverage most coastal Mississippi homeowners need on top of a standard policy, since standard homeowners insurance in this region typically excludes windstorm damage.
In response, the Mississippi Legislature unanimously passed Senate Bill 2409, the Strengthen Mississippi Homes Program, on April 2, 2026, and sent it to the governor. As written, the program is designed to take effect July 1, 2026, and provides grants of up to $10,000 per home for wind-mitigation upgrades that meet the FORTIFIED construction standard, a set of roofing and structural requirements shown to reduce storm damage claims.
This matters for comparison shopping because it means two homes at the same price tag in Long Beach can carry very different monthly costs depending on age and construction. A newer build in a community like Bear Point, built to current energy and wind codes, may already qualify for insurance advantages that an older home near the beach would need a retrofit to reach. When you're weighing a $290,000 new-construction listing against a $290,000 older home a few blocks from the water, the sale price is only half the comparison. The other half is what each one costs to insure this year and next.
So Which Long Beach Are You Actually Comparing
Put the three threads together and a clearer picture forms. The citywide median you see on any single portal is an average of at least three distinct things moving at different speeds: a large base of older homes appreciating slowly, a wave of new construction transacting at a premium, and an emerging harbor corridor where investor interest is running ahead of any measurable sales data. Layer insurance cost on top and even two homes at the identical price point aren't necessarily the same purchase.
If you're comparing Long Beach to other Gulf Coast towns on price alone, you're missing which of these three Long Beach markets you're actually looking at. A listing near a new subdivision like Harbor View is playing a different game than a listing three blocks off Jeff Davis Avenue near the harbor, and both are different again from an established home in an older part of town.
A Few Direct Questions
Is Long Beach currently a buyer's market or a seller's market? The portals disagree on days on market, ranging from 45 to 101 days depending on the source and the window measured, which itself tells you conditions vary significantly by property type and location within the city rather than pointing to one clean answer.
Should I wait until the harbor project finishes before buying near it? The harbor's full reopening was targeted for the first quarter of 2027 as of spring 2026 reporting, and the surrounding corridor is already drawing investor interest ahead of that completion. Waiting for the finished amenity means competing with buyers who moved during construction.
Do new-construction homes in Long Beach really cost less to insure? Newer builds constructed to current codes are positioned to benefit from FORTIFIED-related standards more easily than older homes, and Mississippi's new Strengthen Mississippi Homes Program offers grants for retrofitting older homes to a similar standard. The actual premium difference depends on the specific address, elevation, and carrier, so a real quote is the only way to know for certain.
Numbers on a portal can tell you what happened last month somewhere in Long Beach. They can't tell you which Long Beach you're standing in. That's the kind of read that comes from walking the comps block by block, not scrolling past them.
If you're weighing Long Beach against other coastal towns, or trying to figure out what a specific address here would actually cost to own, Prosper Realty can walk the corridor with you and pull the comparisons that actually apply to your price point. And if you already own here and are curious what your home looks like inside this shifting market, Get a Free Home Valuation is the place to start.
