Madison County, Mississippi Eviction Risk: Very Low

Madison County, Mississippi eviction laws carries an average eviction-risk score of 2.3/10 (Very Low), placing it in the middle third of the state, with 37 Mississippi counties ranked riskier and 44 ranked less risky. For landlords and investors, that middle-ground position tells a nuanced story: operating conditions here are generally manageable, but the county is far from a uniformly smooth market. Renters make up 34.5% of households, average rent runs $1,507 per month, and the average rent burden sits at 30.6%, all figures that point to a renter base stretched but not severely distressed by regional standards.

The intra-county spread, 2.1 to 2.5 across 5 tracked cities, is the more important signal for operators making neighborhood-level decisions. A full 0.8-point gap separates the county's most landlord-favorable city from its highest-risk ones, which means choosing where to place a unit inside Madison County matters as much as choosing the county over a peer market.

The cities inside Madison County

The two highest-risk cities are Ridgeland and Flora, each scoring 2.5/10. Ridgeland is the county's second-largest city at 24,587 residents, and Canton checks in at 10,811. Both sit at the top of the county risk range, and investors concentrating portfolios in either market should price in the higher end of the county's eviction-cost and timeline exposure. Flora, at 2.5/10, lands in the moderately elevated tier and warrants similar scrutiny despite its smaller population of 2,331.

At the opposite end, the city of Madison scores 2.1/10, the county's lowest-risk reading, anchored by a population of 27,946. Gluckstadt, with 3,236 residents, scores 2.3/10. Both represent the most landlord-friendly operating environments in the county. The 0.8-point gap between Madison eviction risk and Ridgeland, or Canton eviction risk, is a clear reminder that eviction risk is hyper-local: two properties a few miles apart can sit in meaningfully different risk environments even when they share the same county tax rolls.

State-level laws that apply here

Every landlord in Madison County operates under Mississippi eviction laws state law, specifically Miss. Code SS 89-8 (Landlord and Tenant). For non-payment of rent, the required notice period is 3 days. A lease-violation cure notice requires 14 days, and a no-cause end-of-term notice requires 30 days. Mississippi eviction laws does not require just cause to terminate a tenancy, and the state preempts any local rent-control ordinance, so no Madison County municipality can impose rent caps. An uncontested eviction typically resolves in 30 to 60 days; a contested case can stretch to 60 to 120 days. Understanding the full Mississippi eviction laws eviction process before signing a lease, not after a dispute arises, is the practical lesson here.

Cost exposure under Mississippi eviction costs runs from a court filing fee of $75 to $150, a sheriff lockout fee of $30 to $120, and attorney fees of $500 to $2,500, depending on case complexity and whether the tenant contests. There is no source-of-income protection under state law, which preserves landlord discretion at screening. Fair housing complaints route through the Mississippi eviction laws Attorney General, Consumer Protection division.

With a poverty rate of 11.9% across the county and renters comprising 34.5% of households, financial stress is present but not acute by Mississippi standards; the city-level grid above breaks down where that stress concentrates and which specific markets within Madison County carry the most, and least, operating risk.