Cawood, Kentucky.
Typical home $72,335 (-2.5% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$186 (+96%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $1,853 -2%
- $74,189$72,335 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $12,728 +21%
- $59,607$72,335 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.
- Cawood$380
- Kentucky$1,212
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 18 years.
Typical home values in Cawood, KY fell 2.5% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Cawood, Harlan County, Kentucky
Cawood, in Harlan County, had 630 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Harlan County was 5.9% in August 2026, and the county had 0.5% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Harlan County work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Cawood is a very small community in Harlan County, in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky. Homes here cost far less than in much of the country, and household incomes across the county run below the typical American level. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm, with July the warmest. Rain and melted snow are plentiful through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in the building trades and in government. Across Harlan County, the largest workplaces include Harlan County Schools, Harlan ARH Hospital and Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College. Unemployment across the county is somewhat higher than it was a year ago, and the county has slightly fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. Outdoor places are close at hand. Kentenia State Forest and Blanton Forest, both protected areas, are a short drive away, as is Cranks Creek Lake, a reservoir. For a longer outing, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park is a longer drive away, and Hensley Settlement, a museum, is another longer drive.
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What people in Harlan County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Harlan County had 6,247 jobs in 2025, 0.5% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 45° and lows near 26°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 65°. About 52 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Baxter weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Harlan County
- Harlan County SchoolsSchool district638FTE
- Harlan ARH HospitalConvalescent homes or convalescent hospitals402
- Harlan ARHGeneral hospital315FTE
- Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical CollegeTwo-year college277
- WalmartDiscount department stores173
- Harlan Health and Rehabilitation CenterNursing homes154
- K VA T Food StoresSupermarket124
- Southeastern Ky Rehabilitation IndustriesCut and sew apparel contractors122
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 16 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,543 people in all across the county; Cawood 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
- Strong windRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- WildfireRelatively moderate
- Cold wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Cawood’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 Harlan County.
Cawood home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cawood$72,335
- Kentucky$230,909
- 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 Cawood address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cawood — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.