Brookford, North Carolina.
Typical home $155,518 (-0.6% in a year). Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$505 (+163%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $1,001 -1%
- $156,518$155,518 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $40,403 +35%
- $115,115$155,518 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.
- Brookford$816
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Brookford, NC fell 0.6% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Brookford, Catawba County, North Carolina
Brookford is a town of 442 people in Catawba County. Unemployment in Catawba County was 3.5% in August 2026, and the county had about as many jobs in 2025 as the year before. The most people in Catawba County work in manufacturing, then schools and health care.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Brookford is a very small town in Catawba County, North Carolina, with far fewer people than most towns of its kind. Homes here cost less than the typical American home, and relatively few adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cool and summers warm, with rain and melted snow spread through the year.
Work. Most residents who work do so in manufacturing, in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, or in restaurants and hotels. Very few work from home. Across Catawba County, large workplaces include Catawba County Schools, Catawba Valley Medical Center and Corning Optical Communications. Unemployment across the county is a little lower than it was a year earlier, and the number of jobs has held steady.
Things to do. The Hickory Museum of Art is in or beside town, as is Moretz Stadium. A short drive away are Hickory Motor Speedway, a race track, and the Hickory Aviation Museum. For a longer outing, Lake Norman, a large reservoir, and South Mountains State Park, a protected area, are both a longer drive away.
Report a mistake
- 7%of adults have a degree
- 2%work from home
What people in Catawba County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Catawba County had 89,369 jobs in 2025, about as many as the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 49° and lows near 30°; warmest in July, with highs near 87° and lows near 68°. About 47 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Hickory Faa Airport weather station, 3 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Catawba County
- Catawba County SchoolsSchool district1,882FTE
- Catawba Valley Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,533FTE
- TargetDiscount department stores1,332
- Frye Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,029FTE
- Corning Optical CommunicationsFiber optic cable made from purchased fiber optic strand1,016
- Advancepierre FoodsFrozen specialty food manufacturing891
- Catawba Valley Community CollegeTwo-year college880
- GKN AutomotiveDifferential and rear axle assemblies, automotive, truck, and bus, manufacturing857
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 241 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 37,222 people in all across the county; Brookford has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) 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
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Brookford’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. 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 Catawba County and the Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC metro.
Brookford home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Brookford$155,518
- North Carolina$332,159
- 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 Brookford address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Brookford — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.