Jacksonville Real Estate Market 2026

As of May 2026, the Jacksonville closed-sale market shows a median sale price of $322,000, a 2.9% year-over-year gain that is modest by the standards of the prior cycle but consistent with a market absorbing a meaningful inventory build. Months of supply has reached 3.9, and the median days on market has extended to 59 days, both readings that suggest buyers hold more negotiating leverage than they did during the tightest years of the post-pandemic run.

The sale-to-list ratio of 0.9775, meaning the typical home closes at roughly 97.75 cents on the listed dollar, reinforces that picture: sellers are conceding ground, though not dramatically. Median price per square foot sits at $190. These observed sale-market figures are distinct from the ACS owner-estimated home values and the Verus-AI tract-level forecasts discussed in subsequent sections; they are not inputs to either model but provide a useful real-time reference point for where transaction prices are settling. The divergence between the population-weighted median owner-estimated value of $281,200 and the $322,000 closed-sale median is worth noting: owner estimates tend to lag transaction prices, and the gap here is consistent with a market where recent comps have moved above older self-reported valuations.

Across the 218 Jacksonville tracts for which the Verus-AI model carries a full decade of history (2014 through 2024), the population-weighted median owner-estimated home value is $281,200. The score distribution across those 218 tracts spans a wide range, from a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 79 on the 100-point Verus-AI scale, with the 10th percentile at 44 and the 90th percentile at 67. That 23-point spread between the tails of the distribution signals meaningful within-market dispersion: Jacksonville is not a monolithic market, and tract selection matters considerably more here than in metros where scores cluster tightly around the median.

The leading tract in the ranked table below, Mandarin (tract 12031016726), illustrates the appreciation trajectory that underpins the top scores. Its observed value rose from $133,600 in 2014 to $261,600 in 2024, a roughly doubling over the decade, before the Verus-AI model projects continued appreciation through 2029. At the other end of the spectrum, San Jose (tract 12031016606) carries a current value of $86,490 and a five-year forecast of -4.9%, the only tract among the 20 shown in the ranked tables with a negative price outlook over the forecast horizon. The contrast between these two endpoints captures the core analytical challenge in Jacksonville: aggregate statistics obscure a distribution with genuinely divergent trajectories at the tract level.

Among the 15 top-ranked tracts, grades range from B down to C+, with 4 tracts graded B, 8 graded B-, and 3 graded C+. No tract in the top 15 carries an A grade, which is consistent with a market where strong fundamentals are present but where the score ceiling reflects real constraints, income volatility, risk designations, or forecast uncertainty, rather than a uniformly favorable outlook. Fourteen of the 15 top-ranked tracts carry Low or Moderate risk designations; one, Sandalwood (tract 12031014603), carries an Elevated risk designation despite its score of 71, a combination that warrants attention from investors who weight downside scenarios heavily.

The top-15 ranked table reveals a geographic concentration that is analytically meaningful. Mandarin accounts for three of the 15 entries, tracts 12031016726, 12031016807, and 12031016803, with scores of 79, 78, and 70 respectively, making it the most represented named area in the top tier among the 20 tracts shown in the ranked tables. Atlantic Beach contributes two tracts: 12031013902 (score 76, grade B) and 12031013905 (score 74, grade B-). The Atlantic Beach entry at score 76 carries a Moderate risk designation, while the score-74 entry carries a Low designation, a reminder that higher scores do not automatically correspond to lower risk ratings, since the composite score incorporates return potential alongside risk.

Current values across the top 15 span a wide range, from $176,237 for Cedar Hills (tract 12031012602) to $948,200 for Atlantic Beach (tract 12031013905), reflecting the fact that the Verus-AI score is not a proxy for price level but rather for the combination of income trajectory, forecast appreciation, and risk-adjusted return. Jacksonville Beach (tract 12031014101) at $518,000 and Jacksonville - Tract 4408 at $796,426 sit in the upper tier of current values, while Cedar Hills and Sandalwood at $286,500 represent the more accessible end of the top-15 cohort. The rent-to-price annual yield for Cedar Hills (tract 12031012602) is 10.58%, the highest yield figure reported among the 15 top-ranked tracts, which may attract income-oriented capital even though the five-year price forecast of 30.22% trails several higher-scoring peers.

Among the five lowest-ranked tracts, all five carry grade F, a uniform outcome confirmed by the data. Their risk designations, however, are not uniform: one carries a High designation (San Jose, tract 12031016606), two carry Elevated designations (Southpoint and Jacksonville - Tract 2100), one carries a Moderate designation (Jacksonville - Tract 3732), and one carries a Low designation (Deerwood, tract 12031014417). The Low risk designation on Deerwood is the most counterintuitive reading in the bottom five: despite a score of 22 and a five-year forecast of only 4.1%, the model's risk flag does not reach Elevated, likely because the tract's current value of $337,700 and median household income of $74,141 provide a degree of structural support that limits downside severity even as appreciation potential is constrained. Four of the five bottom tracts show negative year-over-year income changes, a pattern that is a primary driver of their low composite scores.

Cedar Hills (tract 12031012800) leads the momentum list with a 16.4% income gain and a Verus-AI score of 68, a score that places it just outside the top 15 but that, combined with a 37.01% five-year forecast, suggests the income signal may not yet be fully priced into the composite. LaVilla (tract 12031002902) follows with a 15.98% income gain and a score of 62, a combination that implies the market has not yet awarded LaVilla the same composite recognition as tracts with longer income track records.

Atlantic Beach (tract 12031013902) appears in both the top-15 ranked table and the momentum leaders list, with a 15.01% income gain, the fourth-highest income gain among the 10 momentum leaders shown in that table, reinforcing its composite score of 76. Argyle Forest (tract 12031013302) shows a 15.04% income gain with a score of only 55, which sits at the median Verus-AI score for the full 218-tract scored universe; its five-year forecast of 35.32% is solid but trails the 37.01% ceiling reached by several peers, suggesting the model is discounting some element of its profile beyond income alone.

At the opposite end of the income trajectory, four of the five bottom-ranked tracts show negative year-over-year income changes among the 20 tracts in the ranked tables. Southpoint (tract 12031015928) records the sharpest income decline among the 20 tracts shown in the ranked tables, at -25.03%. It is worth noting that across all 218 scored Jacksonville tracts, the sharpest income decline belongs to a different tract entirely, the scored universe data identifies a -35.23% reading at the extreme, which places Southpoint's -25.03% in broader context: it is severe within the ranked set but not the most extreme reading in the full scored universe. San Jose (tract 12031016606) shows a -2.97% income change alongside a -4.9% five-year price forecast, the only negative price forecast among the 20 ranked tracts, and a rent-to-price yield of 16.68% that reflects distressed pricing rather than genuine income-generating strength.

The Verus-AI five-year forecast covers the 2025-2029 window, with 80% confidence intervals reported at the tract level. Across all 218 scored Jacksonville tracts, the mean five-year forecast appreciation is 32.98%, with the median at 37.01%, a distribution that is notably compressed at the upper end, where the 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles all converge at 37.01%.

The leading tract, Mandarin (tract 12031016726), carries a five-year forecast of 37.01%, projecting a value of $358,415 by 2029 from a current base of $261,600. The forecast chart for this tract illustrates the widening confidence band over the horizon: the 80% interval at the 2029 terminal year spans from $320,632 on the lower bound to $400,650 on the upper bound, a band width of $80,018. That widening, from $27,770 in the first forecast year to $80,018 by 2029, is a standard property of multi-year forecasts and should be read as an honest representation of compounding uncertainty rather than a model weakness. Investors using the point forecast alone without reference to the band are understating the range of plausible outcomes.

Among the 15 top-ranked tracts, five-year forecasts range from 27.73% for Jacksonville - Tract 0301 to 37.01% for seven tracts that reach the model ceiling. The tracts that fall below the ceiling, including Jacksonville Beach at 32.33%, Cedar Hills at 30.22%, and Mandarin (tract 12031016803) at 31.44%, are not necessarily weaker investments; their lower forecast figures may reflect more conservative income trajectories or higher baseline values that compress percentage gains. Among the five bottom-ranked tracts, forecasts range from -4.9% for San Jose (tract 12031016606) to 9.36% for Jacksonville - Tract 2100, a spread that confirms the bottom cohort is not uniformly distressed in price terms but is uniformly weak on the composite score dimensions the model weights most heavily.

The market-level mean forecast of 32.98% over five years implies a compound annual growth rate that, if realized, would represent a meaningful real return above typical inflation assumptions, but the 80% confidence interval framing means roughly one in five outcomes falls outside the stated band entirely. The forecast is model-derived from a history window of 2014 through 2024 and does not incorporate forward-looking assumptions about interest rates, zoning changes, or macroeconomic shocks. Readers should treat the central forecast as a baseline scenario, not a guarantee.

The Verus-AI scoring model covers 218 of the 260 census tracts in Jacksonville, representing 83.8% of the total tract count. The remaining 42 tracts are unscoreable under the current methodology, typically because they lack sufficient transaction history across the 2014-2024 observation window. The scored universe has a total population of 1,389,602. Scores are expressed on a 0-to-100 scale, with the Jacksonville distribution running from a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 79; the mean score is 54.32 and the median is 55.0. The relatively tight clustering between mean and median suggests the distribution is approximately symmetric, without a severe skew toward either tail, though the wide absolute range from 3 to 79 confirms that outliers exist at both ends.

Home value figures in the tract-level analysis are drawn from ACS owner-estimated values, which are self-reported and tend to lag closed-sale transaction prices. The market snapshot figures, median sale price of $322,000, active inventory of 4,529, and related metrics, are observed third-party sale-market data as of May 2026 and are explicitly not inputs to the Verus-AI score or forecast. Readers should not conflate the two series: a tract's ACS-based current value and its Verus-AI forecast are internally consistent, but they may diverge from what a buyer would pay in a current transaction.

Confidence intervals on the five-year forecasts are 80% intervals, meaning the model assigns approximately a 20% probability to outcomes outside the stated band. Risk grades, Low, Moderate, Elevated, High, are model-derived labels based on volatility and structural factors in the historical data; they are not insurance ratings, lending classifications, or regulatory designations, and they should not be used as substitutes for property-level due diligence. Income figures are year-over-year percentage changes in median household income at the tract level, sourced from ACS estimates, and are subject to the sampling error inherent in small-geography survey data. Single-year income swings, particularly the large negative readings visible in several bottom-ranked tracts, may reflect survey volatility as much as genuine economic deterioration and should be interpreted with appropriate caution.