Sulphur, Louisiana.
Typical home $202,860 (+2.9% in a year), asking rent $1,287 (+11.8%). Lake Charles, LA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$294 (+38%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $5,761 +3%
- $197,099$202,860 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $8,090 -4%
- $210,950$202,860 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.
- Sulphur$1,065
- Louisiana$1,123
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Sulphur, LA rose 2.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Sulphur, LA rose 11.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Sulphur runs $70/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $305 in Oct 2023.
That is $1,357 a month against $1,287 rent: a $1,065 mortgage payment, plus $75 property tax and $217 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Sulphur
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$1,357
- Renting$1,287
- Mortgage only$1,065
Property tax · $75/mo 0.45% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Calcasieu Parish, LA
Insurance & upkeep · $217/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Sulphur, Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana
Sulphur is a city of 21,809 people in Calcasieu Parish. Half its households earn more than $61,760 a year and half less, against $67,564 across Calcasieu Parish; 16% of its people live below the poverty line. 75% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 25% are rented. Unemployment in Calcasieu Parish was 3.8% in August 2026, and the county had 0.7% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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. Sulphur is a small Louisiana city in Calcasieu Parish, where most homes are lived in by their owners. Household incomes run a little below the parish's, and a larger share of people live below the poverty line than many readers might expect. Winters are mild, with January the coldest month and still fairly gentle by national standards, while summers are hot, with August the warmest, and plenty of rain falls across the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in restaurants and hotels, and in the building trades. West Calcasieu-Cameron Hospital is the largest workplace in town, and Walmart and Lowe's of Sulphur are also among the biggest employers. Commutes are short, and very few people work from home.
Things to do. Sam Houston Jones State Park, a protected area, and Prien Lake are both a short drive away, and Contraband Bayou is close as well for time on the water. For a longer trip, the Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center and the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge are a longer drive away.
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- 8,234households
- 17%of adults have a degree
- 16%below the poverty line
- 18 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Calcasieu Parish had 89,310 jobs in 2025, 0.7% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 63° and lows near 43°; warmest in August, with highs near 93° and lows near 75°. About 60 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Lake Charles weather station, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Sulphur
- West Calcasieu-cameron HospitalGeneral hospital481FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters355
- Lowe's Companies, INCHomecenter115
- BraskExchangers, heat, manufacturing98
- Stine SulphurHome centers, building materials83
- TuteraSkilled nursing facilities83
- StineHome centers, building materials55
- Superior Supply & SteelPipe, metal, merchant wholesalers52
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 17 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,142 people in all. Hospitals come 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
- LightningVery high
- HurricanesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Coastal floodingRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Sulphur’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 Calcasieu Parish and the Lake Charles, LA metro.
Sulphur home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Sulphur$202,860
- Louisiana$213,867
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Sulphur listings, and the typical home goes pending in 50 days — the market is roughly in balance.
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
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Sulphur25.60%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Sulphur50
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Sulphur125
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Sulphur31
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Sulphur$189,457
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Sulphur address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Sulphur — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Sulphur
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 70663 | Sulphur | 27,799 | $1,124 | $184,408 |
| 70665 | Sulphur | 13,222 | — | $236,361 |