Creston, North Carolina.
Typical home $274,359 (-0.1% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$597 (+71%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $397 -0%
- $274,756$274,359 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $15,486 -5%
- $289,845$274,359 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.
- Creston$1,440
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Creston, NC fell 0.1% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Creston, Ashe County, North Carolina
Creston is a township of 598 people in Ashe County. Unemployment in Ashe County was 2.9% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Ashe 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Creston is a small township in Ashe County, in the mountains of northwestern North Carolina. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and a fair amount of snow each year, while summers stay mild, with July the warmest. Rain and melted snow add up to a good deal over the year, and homes here are valued well above what the county's incomes might suggest.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and the building trades also common. Across Ashe County, some of the largest workplaces are Ashe County Schools, Ashe Memorial Hospital and American Emergency Vehicles. The commute is a long one, and the county's job market has been close to level, with unemployment lower than it was a year earlier.
Things to do. Mountain Bogs National Wildlife Refuge, a protected area, lies in or beside town. A short drive away are Elk Knob State Park and Mount Jefferson State Natural Area, both good for walking in the high country. For water, the New River is a longer drive away, as is Cascade Falls, a waterfall.
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- 8%below the poverty line
- 37 mintypical commute
What people in Ashe County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Ashe County had 7,503 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more 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 81° and lows near 58°. About 14 inches of snow and 51 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Jefferson East weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Ashe County
- American Emergency VehiclesAmbulance manufacturing474
- Ashe County SchoolsSchool district425FTE
- GE Aerospace317
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters252
- Ashe Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital246FTE
- County of AsheLaw enforcement statistics centers, government200
- Skyline Telephone MembershipTelecommunications carriers, wired159
- United Chemi-ConCapacitors, electronic, fixed and variable, manufacturing147
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 11 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,996 people in all across the county; Creston 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
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- Cold wavesRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms across Ashe County, 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 Ashe County.
Creston home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Creston$274,359
- North Carolina$332,159
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Creston 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.
- Creston14
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Creston address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Creston — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.