Cowen, West Virginia.
Typical home $89,572 (-1.0% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$225 (+91%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $929 -1%
- $90,500$89,572 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $4,848 +6%
- $84,724$89,572 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.
- Cowen$470
- West Virginia$927
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 62 years.
Typical home values in Cowen, WV fell 1.0% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Cowen, Webster County, West Virginia
Cowen is a town of 487 people in Webster County. Unemployment in Webster County was 5.0% in August 2026, and the county had 0.9% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Webster County work in schools and health care, then farming.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Cowen is a small town in Webster County, West Virginia, set along the Williams River in the hills of the central part of the state. Its people are younger than in many small towns, and homes here cost far less than the national typical. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm without being hot. A good deal of rain and melted snow falls over the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by farming, forestry and mining, then shops and manufacturing. Across Webster County, some of the largest workplaces are Webster County Schools, Webster Memorial Hospital and the Jim C. Hamer Company's Curtin Mill sawmill. Fewer adults hold a four-year degree than in most places, and incomes in the county are on the low side. Unemployment in the county has eased compared with a year earlier, though the number of jobs has slipped a little.
Things to do. The Williams River runs in or beside town, and the Big Ditch Wildlife Management Area, a protected area, lies alongside it. A short drive away is the Cranberry River, and a longer drive brings you to the Gauley River National Recreation Area, a protected area built around a well-known river.
Report a mistake
- 8%of adults have a degree
What people in Webster County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Webster County had 1,473 jobs in 2025, 0.9% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 41° and lows near 20°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 58°. About 91 inches of snow and 60 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Webster Springs North weather station, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Webster County
- StarKist Samoa CoFish manufacturing1,928
- Webster County SchoolsSchool district188FTE
- Webster Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital144FTE
- Wvnh EMPNursing care facilities69
- Jim C. Hamer Company - Curtin MillSawmills44
- NWHSawmills34
- Thomas Cogar Lumber CoLogging23
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 6 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 2,274 people in all across the county; Cowen has none of its own. 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
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Cowen’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 Webster County.
Cowen home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cowen$89,572
- West Virginia$176,576
- 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 Cowen address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cowen — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.