Izard County, Arkansas Eviction Risk: Low

Izard County scores 1.9/10 on the eviction-risk index, placing it in the Low tier and solidly in the middle of Arkansas's 75 counties, ranked 44th. That ranking means 43 counties carry more risk for landlords, and 31 are even calmer, so the county sits near the lower end of the risk spectrum without being the state's gentlest market. For an investor scanning rural Arkansas eviction laws for a stable place to place capital, a 1.9 average across 9 tracked cities signals an environment where tenant disputes are less frequent and the legal process, when needed, moves without the friction common in higher-risk urban markets.

The broader operating picture reinforces that read. Average rent sits at $601 per month, rent burden at 26.1% of income, and the renter share of households at 30.9%. Those figures describe a predominantly owner-occupied, price-accessible market where affordability pressure is modest. The county's total population of 8,471 is small, so individual vacancies matter more than in larger metro counties, but demand from cost-sensitive renters has historically held steady along this stretch of the Ozarks.

The cities inside Izard County

Risk is not uniform across the county's 9 cities; it spans a range of 1.3 to 2.1. Melbourne, the second-largest city with 2,263 residents, carries the highest score at 2.1/10, still Low by any benchmark but the relative high-water mark in the county. Calico Rock follows at 2/10 with a population of 1,771, and Horseshoe Bend, the county's most populous city at 2,555 residents, comes in at 1.9/10, exactly matching the county average. Landlords in those three cities should plan for a small but real uptick in collection friction compared with smaller communities.

On the lower end, Violet Hill scores 1.3/10, Franklin and Guion each score 1.4/10, and Oxford comes in at 1.6/10. These communities are among the most landlord-favorable in an already landlord-favorable county. Mount Pleasant and Pineville both score 1.8/10, sitting just below the county average. The spread makes clear that city-level due diligence matters even inside a low-risk county.

State-level laws that apply here

Every property in Izard County operates under Ark. Code § 18-17 (Residential Landlord-Tenant Act). Arkansas state law requires a 3-day notice for nonpayment of rent, a 14-day cure notice for lease violations, and a 30-day notice to end a tenancy with no stated cause. Once a filing is made, uncontested cases typically resolve in 30 to 60 days; contested matters can run 90 to 150 days. The Arkansas eviction process is among the more streamlined in the region, reflecting a statutory framework designed without mandatory just-cause requirements or rent-control provisions, and Arkansas state law preempts any local attempt to impose rent caps.

On the cost side, the Arkansas eviction costs a landlord can realistically expect run from a court filing fee of $165 to $250, a sheriff lockout fee of $40 to $120, and attorney fees of $500 to $2,500 depending on case complexity. The Arkansas security deposit limits and Arkansas tenant protections pages detail the full statutory picture, including what landlords must disclose and return at lease end. Source-of-income is not a protected class under current Arkansas law, and the state has no formal retaliation statute catalogued in the current code review, leaving landlords with somewhat broader operating flexibility than in states with layered tenant-protection regimes.

Izard County's average poverty rate of 27% is a meaningful operating variable: it signals that a portion of the renter pool may face income volatility, making tenant screening discipline important even in a low-risk county. The city-by-city scores in the grid above let landlords pinpoint exactly where that variability concentrates across the county's 9 tracked communities.