Cary, North Carolina.
Typical home $613,395 (-1.3% in a year), asking rent $1,768 (+1.5%). Raleigh-Cary, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,782 (+124%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $7,913 -1%
- $621,308$613,395 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $127,839 +26%
- $485,556$613,395 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.
- Cary$3,220
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Cary, NC fell 1.3% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Cary, NC rose 1.5% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Cary runs $2,470/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $2,703 in Jan 2025.
That is $4,237 a month against $1,768 rent: a $3,220 mortgage payment, plus $361 property tax and $657 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Cary
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$4,237
- Renting$1,768
- Mortgage only$3,220
Property tax · $361/mo 0.71% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Wake County, NC
Insurance & upkeep · $657/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 Cary, Wake County, North Carolina
Cary is a town of 174,721 people in Wake County. Half its households earn more than $134,905 a year and half less, against $105,768 across Wake County; 6% of its people live below the poverty line. 67% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 33% are rented. Unemployment in Cary was 2.9% in August 2026, and Wake County had 1.9% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in professional services, 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. Cary is a large town in Wake County, and its residents are somewhat older than the typical American. Household incomes run well above the county's, and a smaller share of people live below the poverty line than in many places. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and a large majority of adults hold a four-year degree.
Work. Residents work mostly in professional and business services, in schools, hospitals and social care, in manufacturing, and in shops. Among the largest workplaces in Cary are Wake County Schools, Wake MED Cary Hospital and the Kellogg Company. Unemployment is a little lower than a year ago, and many people work from home, so a good number skip the commute altogether.
Things to do. Lake Crabtree and William B. Umstead State Park are both a short drive away, offering water and woodland close to home. WakeMed Soccer Park, also a short drive off, is a stadium for watching a match. For a longer outing, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and Jordan Lake are each a longer drive away, one indoors and one on the water.
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- 69,710households
- 70%of adults have a degree
- 6%below the poverty line
- 22 mintypical commute
- 36%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Wake County had 665,775 jobs in 2025, 1.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 51° and lows near 31°; warmest in July, with highs near 89° and lows near 69°. About 5 inches of snow and 48 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Apex weather station, 3 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cary
- Wake County SchoolsSchool district19,736FTE
- Wake MED Cary HospitalGeneral hospital1,205FTE
- Kellogg CompanyBakery products, dry, manufacturing869
- Millennium Print GroupCommercial printing646
- Verizon CommunicationsWired telecommunications carriers533
- Precision Walls Inc-RaleighDrywall contractors476
- WithersRavenelCivil engineering services462
- Circle Graphics - RaleighPrint shops, digital404
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 125 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 15,649 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) 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
- HailRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingrelatively high in parts of CaryRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Cary’s census tracts, 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 Wake County and the Raleigh-Cary, NC metro.
Cary home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cary$613,395
- North Carolina$332,159
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Cary listings, and the typical home goes pending in 22 days — the market is heating up.
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.
- Cary37.21%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Cary22
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Cary531
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Cary155
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Cary$616,866
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Cary99.25%
Zip codes with a Cary address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cary — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Cary
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27519 | Cary | 69,836 | $1,899 | $690,357 |
| 27513 | Cary | 46,979 | $1,629 | $552,294 |
| 27511 | Cary | 33,221 | $1,915 | $491,833 |
| 27518 | Cary | 19,735 | $1,608 | $727,159 |