Dover, North Carolina.
Typical home $133,221 (+2.0% in a year). New Bern, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$396 (+131%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $2,548 +2%
- $130,673$133,221 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $23,968 +22%
- $109,253$133,221 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.
- Dover$699
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 17 years.
Typical home values in Dover, NC rose 2.0% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Dover, Craven County, North Carolina
Dover is a town of 349 people in Craven County. Unemployment in Craven County was 3.8% in August 2026, and the county had 1.1% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Craven County work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Dover is a very small town in Craven County, with a population well below that of most places on this site. Home values are modest, and few adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cool and summers are hot, with rain spread through the year and little snow to speak of.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in manufacturing, and in restaurants and hotels. Across Craven County, some of the largest workplaces are CarolinaEast Medical Center, the Craven County Board of Education Schools and BSH Home Appliances SNB. The typical commute is a long one, and very few people work from home.
Things to do. CSS Neuse, a museum, is a short drive away, as is Core Creek, a river good for a quiet look at the water. A longer drive brings you to Cliffs of the Neuse State Park, a protected area, and to Tryon Palace, another museum.
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- 8%of adults have a degree
- 34 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What people in Craven County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Craven County had 40,422 jobs in 2025, 1.1% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 54° and lows near 31°; warmest in July, with highs near 90° and lows near 70°. About 53 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Kinston Southeast weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Craven County
- Carolinaeast Medical CenterGeneral hospital2,533FTE
- Craven County Board of Education SchoolsSchool district1,596FTE
- BSH Home Appliances SNBDishwashing machines, household-type, manufacturing1,159
- Fortune Brands Home & SecurityFaucets, plumbing, manufacturing613
- Craven Community CollegeTwo-year college520
- International Paper - New Bern MillPulp manufacturing without making paper365
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters333
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters265
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 68 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 9,893 people in all across the county; Dover has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and colleges from IPEDS (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
- HurricanesVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- LightningRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Dover’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. 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 Craven County and the New Bern, NC metro.
Dover home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Dover$133,221
- North Carolina$332,159
- 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 Dover address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Dover — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.