Lena, Mississippi.
Typical home $169,959 (+6.2% in a year). Jackson, MS metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$348 (+64%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $9,927 +6%
- $160,032$169,959 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $1,814 -1%
- $171,773$169,959 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Lena$892
- Mississippi$1,021
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Lena, MS rose 6.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Lena, Leake County, Mississippi
Lena is a town of 157 people in Leake County. 93% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 7% are rented. Unemployment in Leake County was 2.6% in August 2026, and the county had 2.3% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Leake County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Lena is a very small town in Leake County, Mississippi, where almost everyone lives in a home they own and relatively few households fall below the poverty line. Homes here cost less than in much of the country, and neighbors are likely to know one another. Winters are mild and short, with little or no snow, while summers run hot, and rain falls steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in manufacturing, retail and the building trades. The biggest workplaces across Leake County include Tyson Farms, the Leake County school district and Walmart. Unemployment in the county is lower than it was a year ago, and the county has added jobs over the past year. The typical commute is a fairly long one.
Things to do. Balucta Creek and the Yockanookany River are both rivers a short drive away. A longer drive brings you to Bienville National Forest, a protected area, and to Ross Barnett Reservoir, a large reservoir with room for time on the water.
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- 6%below the poverty line
- 36 mintypical commute
What people in Leake County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Leake County had 5,541 jobs in 2025, 2.3% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 57° and lows near 34°; warmest in July, with highs near 92° and lows near 71°. About 58 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Carthage weather station, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Leake County
- Tyson FarmsPoultry processing1,684
- Leake CO School DistSchool district403FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters205
- Baptist Medical Center - LeakeCritical access hospital124FTE
- TysonBuilding cleaning services, interior108
- Central Electric Power AssocationElectric power distribution systems105
- Priority On DemandAmbulance services, air or ground103
- VitalCore Health StrategiesHome nursing services, private practice32
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 9 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 2,317 people in all across the county; Lena has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Strong windVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Lena’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Leake County and the Jackson, MS metro.
Lena home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Lena$169,959
- Mississippi$194,531
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Lena6
Zip codes with a Lena address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Lena — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.