Waveland vs. Bay St. Louis: Two Permit Desks, Two Years

Aug 20

10 min read

Updated: Aug 28

Hosted stay living room, Waveland independent desk

Waveland and Bay St. Louis sit close enough together on the Mississippi Gulf Coast that a lot of marketing copy treats them as one interchangeable stretch of sand. They aren't. Each town runs its own permit desk, its own fee process, and its own AirROI revenue year, and a host or buyer who blends the two is working from a file that doesn't actually describe either property. Waveland's Building department, at 228-466-2549, is not the same office as Bay St. Louis Planning, at 228-466-5516, and calling one to ask about the other's parcel wastes a call and delays the actual answer.

The two towns are close enough in the data to make the mix-up genuinely easy: Waveland's 93-listing sample prints a typical year of $26,638, while Bay St. Louis's much larger 340-listing sample prints $25,594. Those numbers are near enough to each other that a host skimming quickly might assume one town's figure can stand in for the other's, or that a countywide Hancock County average would be close enough. It wouldn't be. A 247-listing gap in sample size, plus two different permit desks and two different slow months, means these are genuinely separate files.

This page keeps the two towns on separate lines throughout: separate revenue figures, separate seasonal calendars, separate permit contacts, and separate landmark language for what a guest is actually searching for in each town. Neither desk speaks for the other's parcel, and neither town's AirROI year should show up in the other's pricing spreadsheet.

None of this is an argument against comparing the two markets. A host deciding between a Waveland purchase and a Bay St. Louis purchase, or an existing operator weighing whether to expand from one town into the other, has a real reason to look at both files side by side. The point is to make that comparison honestly, with each town's own listing count, revenue figure, seasonal calendar, and permit contact clearly labeled, rather than collapsing them into one Hancock County pitch that neither town's actual data supports. This is not legal advice.

Pick the Desk the Address Actually Has

The starting question for any Waveland or Bay St. Louis host isn't a marketing question, it's a jurisdiction question: which city desk does this specific parcel answer to? Inside Waveland, that's the Building department at 228-466-2549, the office that issues the city's short-term rental permit. Inside Bay St. Louis, that's Planning, at 228-466-5516, the office responsible for that city's own short-term rental permit, published in that town as a $100 form pending confirmation of the current live fee.

A low-regulation label on a listing-aggregator site is a scrape of other operators' listings, not a reading of either town's actual ordinance, and it shouldn't substitute for a phone call to the correct desk. This is not legal advice. Confirm the current fee, the current process, and any parcel-specific requirement directly with the office that matches the address, and don't let a scraped label or a neighboring town's process stand in for a call you haven't made yet.

Waveland's File: $26,638 on 93 Listings

AirROI's trailing-twelve-month extract, updated August 8, 2026, puts Waveland's typical listing revenue at about $26,638 across 93 active rentals. Average night runs $270, occupancy sits at 33.6 percent, and revenue per available night comes out to $95. Year over year, revenue moved up 13.4 percent while supply held essentially flat. The three strongest months are June, May, and October, with June the busiest; September is the slow point. Most guests arrive from New Orleans, then Baton Rouge, with a typical 4.6-night stay booked about 49 days ahead, and superhost share running a high 59.1 percent.

Guests searching for Waveland specifically are usually looking for Waveland Beach, Bayside Park, the Ground Zero Hurricane Museum, or the fishing pier, not a generic Gulf of Mexico caption that could describe any coastal town. About 32.3 percent of Waveland's listings, 30 of the 93, run a 30-night-or-longer minimum, a booking-policy choice rather than an occupancy signal.

Bay St. Louis's File: $25,594 on 340 Listings

Bay St. Louis carries a materially larger tracked market: 340 listings against Waveland's 93, roughly three and a half times the sample size. Its typical year prints at $25,594, close to Waveland's figure but drawn from a much bigger pool, which matters when weighing how much confidence to place in either town's average. A single unusual listing moves a 93-listing average more than it moves a 340-listing one.

Bay St. Louis's slow month is January, not September, which is the single most important seasonal difference between the two towns and the detail most likely to get lost if someone tries to write one calendar for both. Guests searching for Bay St. Louis are typically looking for Old Town, not a generic beach caption that could describe its smaller neighbor down the coast. Keeping each town's landmark language and each town's seasonal calendar separate is the difference between a listing that reads as locally specific and one that reads as copy-pasted.

Do Not Let Port O'Connor Into Either File

Port O'Connor, Texas prints its own AirROI year at $21,172 across 128 listings, and it has no bearing on either Waveland's or Bay St. Louis's Mississippi Gulf Coast figures. It shows up in this comparison only because it's the kind of coastal-town data point that sometimes gets mistakenly pulled into a regional average. It's a different state, a different regulatory desk, and a different guest-origin pattern than either Hancock County town, and it should never appear in a Waveland or Bay St. Louis pricing packet except as a clearly labeled, separate reference.

The discipline here is simple even if it's easy to skip under deadline pressure: every figure in a buyer packet or a pricing memo should trace back to the specific town it describes. A packet that cites $26,638 should be citing Waveland's 93-listing file. A packet that cites $25,594 should be citing Bay St. Louis's 340-listing file. Neither should ever absorb Port O'Connor's Texas number, and neither should be presented as a Hancock County average that blurs the two into one.

What to Bring to Whichever Desk You Call

Before calling either office, have the parcel address ready, confirmed against the tax map rather than assumed from a mailing address, since Waveland and Bay St. Louis boundaries aren't always intuitive from a driveway. Have the platform URL or intended listing details on hand, and ask directly whether a dedicated short-term rental permit window applies to that parcel in 2026, what the current fee is, and what documentation the desk wants to see.

Sales tax can still apply to a stay under 30 days regardless of which town's permit desk answers, so confirm that piece in the same call rather than assuming a permit fee is the only cost. AirROI Low or similar regulation labels on third-party sites are scrapes, not confirmations, and neither desk will treat a printed scrape as a substitute for an actual filed permit. Whichever office answers, the goal of the call is the same: leave with a confirmed fee, a confirmed process, and a date you can point to if the question ever comes up again.

Why Sample Size Changes How Much a Number Should Move a Decision

A 93-listing sample and a 340-listing sample don't carry the same statistical weight, even when the headline revenue figures land within a couple thousand dollars of each other. In Waveland's smaller file, one unusually large or unusually well-reviewed property can shift the average meaningfully; in Bay St. Louis's larger file, the same single listing barely moves the needle. That doesn't make Waveland's number wrong, but it does mean a host or buyer should treat it as more sensitive to outliers and recheck it against a fresher extract more often than they might for the larger neighboring market.

This is also why averaging the two towns together is a worse idea than it might first appear. A blended Hancock County figure wouldn't just mix two different revenue years, it would mix two datasets with meaningfully different confidence levels, producing a number that's less reliable than either individual town's file on its own. Keep the sample-size gap in mind whenever a Waveland-versus-Bay St. Louis comparison shows up in a pricing memo or a buyer's diligence packet, and cite each figure with its listing count attached rather than as a bare dollar amount.

Writing Listing Copy That Actually Names the Right Town

A guest typing 'Waveland' into a search bar and a guest typing 'Bay St. Louis' are searching for different things, even though both are looking at the same general stretch of Hancock County coastline. The Waveland guest is typically headed toward Waveland Beach, Bayside Park, the Ground Zero Hurricane Museum, or the fishing pier. The Bay St. Louis guest is more often headed toward Old Town. A listing that uses generic 'Gulf Coast getaway' language instead of naming the actual walkable landmark loses that guest's attention to a competing listing that names it correctly.

The same specificity applies to the numbers a host or property manager cites in outward-facing materials, whether that's a listing description, a buyer prospectus, or a conversation with a prospective co-host. Waveland's $26,638 belongs with Waveland's 93 listings, its June-May-October peak, and its September hole. Bay St. Louis's $25,594 belongs with its own 340-listing file and its January slow month. Keeping those pairs intact, rather than letting a number drift from the town it actually describes, is the difference between copy that reads as researched and copy that reads as a template stretched across two addresses.

A Note for Anyone Operating Both Towns

A host or a small management company running listings in both Waveland and Bay St. Louis has a genuine reason to compare the two files side by side, and that's a fair use of this data. The mistake would be treating operational overlap, one owner, one cleaning crew, one calendar-management habit, as license to price and market both properties off a single blended file. The two towns' revenue years, seasonal patterns, and permit desks stay separate even when the person managing them doesn't.

In practice that means keeping two pricing calendars, not one with a note; calling both desks, not assuming one town's confirmed process applies to the other; and writing two sets of listing copy, each naming that specific town's actual landmarks rather than a shared paragraph edited by find-and-replace. The extra effort is small compared to the cost of a guest arriving expecting Old Town and finding themselves near Bayside Park instead, or a buyer discovering mid-diligence that the packet's Waveland figure was actually Bay St. Louis's number with the town name swapped.

The same applies to how each property's calendar gets priced heading into a shared regional event. A New Orleans-adjacent holiday weekend might lift demand across both towns at once, but Waveland's September hole and Bay St. Louis's January hole don't move together, and a single discount schedule applied across both properties risks underpricing one town's peak while overpricing the other's slow month. Two files, two calendars, two confirmed permit desks: that's the actual cost of operating in both towns correctly, and it's a small one compared to the cost of a guest complaint or a buyer's diligence catching the mismatch first.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a typical Waveland STR year on this market sample?

AirROI shows Waveland listings earning about $26,638 per year on average, based on 93 listings sampled from August 2025 through July 2026 and updated August 8, 2026. That's up 13.4 percent year over year, while listing supply held roughly flat. Treat this as a directional market figure describing existing listings rather than a guarantee for any individual property, and keep it on its own line separate from Bay St. Louis's file.

Is Bay St. Louis the same market as Waveland?

No, the two towns are tracked separately in AirROI's data. Bay St. Louis shows roughly $25,594 per year across 340 listings, compared with Waveland's $26,638 across a much smaller sample of 93 listings. The two figures shouldn't be blended into one Hancock County number; each town's data should be quoted and cited on its own separate line, especially given the gap in sample size.

Should Port O'Connor's numbers be averaged into either town's estimate?

No. Port O'Connor is a separate Texas market showing about $21,172 per year across 128 listings, and it has no bearing on either Waveland's or Bay St. Louis's Mississippi figures. Hosts and buyers researching either Gulf Coast town should cite that town's own figure on its own line, not blend in a different state's market just because all three share a coastal-town shape.

Which months are strongest for each town?

Waveland's three strongest months are June, May, and October, with June the busiest and September the slow point. Bay St. Louis runs on a different calendar, with January as its slowest month instead. A host managing both, or comparing the two before buying, should build separate pricing calendars rather than assuming one town's seasonality applies to its neighbor.

Where do most guests for each town come from?

New Orleans is the top origin market for Waveland, followed by Baton Rouge, with a typical stay of 4.6 nights booked about 49 days ahead. Superhost status covers 59.1 percent of Waveland's sampled listings, a notably high share. Bay St. Louis draws from a similar regional pool but runs its own separate booking pattern, which is part of why the two towns shouldn't share one marketing pitch.

Is a 30-night minimum stay common in either market?

In Waveland, yes to a meaningful degree: about 32.3 percent of listings, roughly 30 of them, run a 30-night-or-longer minimum. That's a booking-policy choice, not a reflection of actual occupancy, so it shouldn't be read as evidence that a third of the market is running long-term rentals instead of short-term stays. It does mean a meaningful slice of listing stock is competing on a different product than a typical weekend rental.

Is there a specific local contact for confirming each town's permit fee?

Waveland's Building Department is reachable at 228-466-2549 for confirming the current city short-term rental permit and its fee. Bay St. Louis Planning is reachable at 228-466-5516, with that city's permit published as a $100 form pending confirmation of the current live fee. A specific dollar figure for Waveland's permit fee wasn't confirmed on a primary town source in this research pass, so call and confirm directly rather than quoting a scrape or a neighboring town's schedule.

Does a low-regulation label mean neither town requires a permit?

No. That label is a scrape from a listing-aggregator site, not a reading of either town's actual ordinance. Waveland requires a city short-term rental permit through its Building department, and Bay St. Louis requires one through Planning. Confirm the current fee and process directly with the desk that matches your parcel's address rather than treating a third-party regulation label as permission to skip the call. This is not legal advice.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Waveland and Bay St. Louis get pitched as one Gulf Coast stretch, but their permit desks and their AirROI years never share a line.

We rewrite listing copy so each Hancock County town keeps its own occupancy, rate, and permit facts instead of borrowing the neighbor's file. Start at crestcove.co/audit or call (256) 998-7502. Send the live listing draft and the facts you can actually cite.

Reach out at crestcove.co or (256) 998-7502.