Palestine, Arkansas.
Typical home $121,642 (-0.1% in a year). Forrest City, AR metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$222 (+53%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $107 -0%
- $121,749$121,642 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $2,341 -2%
- $123,983$121,642 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.
- Palestine$638
- Arkansas$1,177
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Palestine, AR fell 0.1% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Palestine, St. Francis County, Arkansas
Palestine is a city of 506 people in St. Francis County. Half its households earn more than $36,090 a year and half less, against $42,574 across St. Francis County. Unemployment in St. Francis County was 5.1% in August 2026, and the county had 0.3% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in St. Francis County work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Palestine is a very small city in St. Francis County, Arkansas, where neighbors are likely to know one another. Household incomes run below the county's, and the typical home is valued modestly. Few adults here hold a four-year degree. Winters are mild and rarely bring snow, with January the coldest month, and summers are hot, with July the warmest. Rain falls steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in manufacturing, and in transport and warehousing. Commutes are short, and very few people work from home. Across St. Francis County, the largest workplaces include Boar's Head Co, which makes collagen sausage casings, the Forrest City School District, and the federal prison system. Unemployment across the county is lower than a year earlier, though the number of jobs slipped slightly last year.
Things to do. The St. Francis River is the best known of the nearby places, and it is a longer drive away. So is the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, a protected area for wildlife and quiet time outdoors. Beaty Lake is also a longer drive, and it suits an afternoon by the water.
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- 299households
- 11%of adults have a degree
- 14 mintypical commute
- 2%work from home
What people in St. Francis County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. St. Francis County had 6,705 jobs in 2025, 0.3% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 49° and lows near 32°; warmest in July, with highs near 91° and lows near 72°. About 1 inches of snow and 52 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Marianna South weather station, 18 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in St. Francis County
- Boar's Head CoCollagen sausage casings made from purchased hides604
- Forrest City School DistrictSchool district322FTE
- Bureau of Prisons/federal Prison SystemFederal government · Department of Justice270
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters246
- East Arkansas Community CollegeTwo-year college231
- Core-Mark Forrest City202
- Palestine-wheatley Sch. Dist SchoolsSchool district163FTE
- Belleville Shoe South Inc., Mid-South DivisionFootwear, men's, manufacturing141
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 12 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,601 people in all across the county; Palestine has one of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026) and colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24); 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
- TornadoesVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- EarthquakesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Palestine’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 St. Francis County and the Forrest City, AR metro.
Palestine home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Palestine$121,642
- Arkansas$224,158
- 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.
Zip codes with a Palestine address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Palestine — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.