Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Typical home $621,909 (-0.7% in a year), asking rent $1,723 (+1.1%). Durham-Chapel Hill, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,804 (+124%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $4,237 -1%
- $626,146$621,909 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $136,936 +28%
- $484,974$621,909 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.
- Chapel Hill$3,264
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Chapel Hill, NC fell 0.7% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Chapel Hill, NC rose 1.1% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Chapel Hill runs $2,676/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $2,839 in May 2024.
That is $4,399 a month against $1,723 rent: a $3,264 mortgage payment, plus $469 property tax and $666 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Chapel Hill
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$4,399
- Renting$1,723
- Mortgage only$3,264
Property tax · $469/mo 0.91% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Orange County, NC
Insurance & upkeep · $666/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 Chapel Hill, Orange County, North Carolina
Chapel Hill is a town of 61,960 people in Orange County. Half its households earn more than $85,989 a year and half less, against $90,089 across Orange County; 19% of its people live below the poverty line. 47% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 53% are rented. Unemployment in Chapel Hill was 4.2% in August 2026, and Orange County had 1.4% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then professional services.
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. Chapel Hill is a university town, and it shows in the make-up of its people: a young population, with far more adults holding a four-year degree than in most of the country. Fewer homes are lived in by their owners than across the county, so renting is common, and household incomes sit a little below the county's. Typical home values are high, and so is the share of residents living below the poverty line, which is common in towns with many students. Winters are cool and fairly mild, summers are hot, and rain and melted snow fall through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by professional and business services, restaurants and hotels, and shops. Among the largest workplaces in town are the University of North Carolina Hospitals, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and Wegmans Food Markets. A typical commute is fairly short, and a good number of people work from home. Unemployment is close to where it stood a year ago.
Things to do. In or beside town, the North Carolina Botanical Garden is a botanical garden, and the Ackland Art Museum is a museum, as is the Chapel Hill Museum. Playmakers Theatre, also in or beside town, is a theatre for stage productions. The Nasher Museum of Art is a short drive away, and Jordan Lake, a reservoir, is a longer drive away.
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- 21,189households
- 77%of adults have a degree
- 19%below the poverty line
- 20 mintypical commute
- 28%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Orange County had 79,536 jobs in 2025, 1.4% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 51° and lows near 32°; warmest in July, with highs near 90° and lows near 69°. About 44 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Chapel Hill Williams Airport weather station, a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Chapel Hill
- University of North Carolina HospGeneral hospital8,397FTE
- Chapel Hill-Carrboro City SchoolsSchool district1,925FTE
- Aramark UNC - CHASE DININGFood service contractors396
- Wegmans Food MarketsRetail supermarkets387
- Electrical Workforce SolutionsFire alarm system, electric, installation only330
- HyattRdudc232
- Trader Joe's 0745 Chapel HillGrocery store161
- HyattRdudh132
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 29 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,162 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (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
- Winter weatherrelatively high in parts of Chapel HillRelatively moderate
- Lightningrelatively high in parts of Chapel HillRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingrelatively high in parts of Chapel HillRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Chapel Hill’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 Orange County and the Durham-Chapel Hill, NC metro.
Chapel Hill home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Chapel Hill$621,909
- 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 Chapel Hill listings, and the typical home goes pending in 33 days — the market is cooling.
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.
- Chapel Hill31.28%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Chapel Hill33
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Chapel Hill493
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Chapel Hill124
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Chapel Hill$645,594
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Chapel Hill98.60%
Zip codes with a Chapel Hill address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Chapel Hill — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Chapel Hill
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27516 | Chapel Hill | 47,358 | $2,297 | $598,546 |
| 27514 | Chapel Hill | 32,951 | $1,604 | $629,930 |
| 27517 | Chapel Hill | 29,564 | $1,669 | $662,322 |