Chaplin, Kentucky.
Typical home $227,762 (+4.0% in a year). Bardstown, KY metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$681 (+132%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $8,762 +4%
- $219,000$227,762 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $49,776 +28%
- $177,987$227,762 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.
- Chaplin$1,195
- Kentucky$1,212
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Chaplin, KY rose 4.0% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Chaplin, Nelson County, Kentucky
Chaplin, in Nelson County, had 440 people in the 2020 census. Half its households earn more than $94,352 a year and half less, against $69,562 across Nelson County. 99% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 1% are rented. Unemployment in Nelson County was 4.1% in August 2026, and the county had 0.1% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Nelson County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Chaplin is a very small community in Nelson County, Kentucky, where almost every home is lived in by its owner. Household incomes run well above the county's, and homes here tend to be valued above what many buyers elsewhere in the region would expect. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers turn hot by July, with a fair amount of rain and melted snow across the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in manufacturing, shops and the building trades. Across Nelson County, some of the largest workplaces are Nelson County Schools, American Fuji Seal and Heaven Hill Brands. The typical commute is a long one, and jobs across the county have stayed roughly level from one year to the next.
Things to do. Willisburg Lake and Taylorsville Lake are both a short drive away, and the Chaplin River is close by too, so there is water for a quiet afternoon. A longer drive brings you to Bernheim Forest and Arboretum, a botanical garden, and to My Old Kentucky Home State Park, a museum.
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- 37 mintypical commute
What people in Nelson County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Nelson County had 18,432 jobs in 2025, 0.1% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 43° and lows near 22°; warmest in July, with highs near 90° and lows near 64°. About 52 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Taylorsville Lake weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Nelson County
- Nelson County SchoolsSchool district672FTE
- American Fuji SealFilm, plastics, packaging, manufacturing585
- AutokinitonJob stampings, automotive, metal, manufacturing504
- SazeracDistilleries500
- Heaven Hill BrandsDistilleries499
- Bardstown Independent SchoolsSchool district468FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters353
- The Bardstown Bourbon CompanyDistilleries306
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 55 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 6,841 people in all across the county; Chaplin has none of its own. School districts come 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
- LightningVery high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Cold 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 Chaplin’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 Nelson County and the Bardstown, KY metro.
Chaplin home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Chaplin$227,762
- 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.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Chaplin5
Zip codes with a Chaplin address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Chaplin — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.