Chilhowie, Virginia.
Typical home $195,847 (+3.6% in a year). Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$599 (+140%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $6,806 +4%
- $189,041$195,847 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $52,895 +37%
- $142,952$195,847 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.
- Chilhowie$1,028
- Virginia$2,164
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 11 years.
Typical home values in Chilhowie, VA rose 3.6% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Chilhowie, Smyth County, Virginia
Chilhowie is a town of 1,654 people in Smyth County. 67% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 33% are rented. Unemployment in Smyth County was 4.3% in August 2026, and the county had 3.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Chilhowie is a small town in Smyth County, in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and typical home values sit at a level many would call modest. Incomes in the county are on the lower side, and a four-year degree is held by fewer adults than in much of the country. Winters are cold, with a little snow, summers are warm but not hot, and rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mainly in schools, hospitals and social care, in manufacturing, in shops, and in restaurants and hotels. Among the biggest workplaces in town are SIG Packaging, which makes plastic bags and film, a nursing home run by Valley Operator, and the K VA T food store. Jobs across the county have dipped a little over the past year, and unemployment has been close to where it stood a year earlier. Commutes are short, and very few people work from home.
Things to do. Hungry Mother State Park is a protected area a short drive away, and so is Seng Mountain National Scenic Area. The Saltville Battlefields Historic District, an archaeological site, is also a short drive off. For a longer outing, Mount Rogers National Recreation Area and the Barter Theatre are a longer drive away.
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- 880households
- 24%of adults have a degree
- 13%below the poverty line
- 19 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Smyth County had 11,230 jobs in 2025, 3.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 44° and lows near 23°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 62°. About 10 inches of snow and 48 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Saltville 1N weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Chilhowie
- SIG Packaging, LLC- ChilhowieBags, plastics film, single wall or multiwall, manufacturing329
- Sig PackagingFood storage bags, plastics film, single wall or multiwall, manufacturing329
- Valley OperatorNursing homes195
- K VA T Food StoresSupermarket102
- Berry EnterprisesScrap materials merchant wholesalers63
- Berry Home CentersHome centers, building materials52
- Innovative Millwork TechnologiesCornices, wood, manufacturing51
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 7 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,121 people in all. 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
- Cold wavesVery high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Chilhowie’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 Smyth County and the Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA metro.
Chilhowie home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Chilhowie$195,847
- Virginia$412,252
- 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 4 Chilhowie listings — the market is roughly in balance.
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.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Chilhowie19
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Chilhowie address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Chilhowie — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.