Blackwater, Virginia.
Typical home $141,035 (+6.7% in a year). Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$437 (+144%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $8,889 +7%
- $132,146$141,035 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $40,627 +40%
- $100,408$141,035 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.
- Blackwater$740
- Virginia$2,164
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 10 years.
Typical home values in Blackwater, VA rose 6.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Blackwater, Lee County, Virginia
The Census does not count Blackwater on its own, so the figures here are Lee County's. Half the county's households earn more than $41,827 a year and half less; 29% of the county's people live below the poverty line. 73% of the county's homes are lived in by their owners and 27% are rented. Unemployment in Lee County was 4.8% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Lee County work in schools and health care, then construction.
Written by AI Claude Haiku 5.5 wrote this on 22 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Blackwater is a small community in Lee County, in the far southwestern corner of Virginia, where the Appalachian mountains shape the land and the roads. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm, with July the warmest. Snowfall is light, and the area gets a good deal of rain across the year. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and the population skews older than in the nation as a whole.
Work. Schools, hospitals and social care, building trades, retail shops and government are the main kinds of work residents do. Unemployment in Lee County is a little higher than it was a year earlier, while the number of jobs has grown slightly over the same period. A smaller share of adults hold a four-year degree than across the nation, and few people work from home.
Things to do. Natural Tunnel State Park, a protected area a longer drive away, is one of the best known places to visit nearby. The Cedars Natural Area Preserve, another protected area, is a short drive away, and the North Fork Clinch River, a river, is also a short drive off.
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- 8,527households
- 45.5median age
- 14%of adults have a degree
- 29%below the poverty line
- 26 mintypical commute
- 10%work from home
What people in Lee County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Lee County had 4,198 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 45° and lows near 23°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 63°. About 9 inches of snow and 50 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Pennington Gap weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Lee County
- Lee County Public SchoolsSchool district563FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters253
- Bureau of Prisons/federal Prison SystemFederal government · Department of Justice142
- K VA T Food StoresSupermarket69
- Lee County Community HospitalCritical access hospital46FTE
- Elk KnobHighway,street,& bridge construciton22
- DeRoyal IndustriesSurgical supplies manufacturing21
- Virginia Department of TransportationHighway repair maintenance20
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 6 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 435 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026) 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
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms across Lee County, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 Lee County and the Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA metro.
Blackwater home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Blackwater$141,035
- Virginia$412,252
- 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.
- Blackwater5
Zip codes with a Blackwater address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Blackwater — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.