Ferrum, Virginia.
Typical home $258,650 (+5.3% in a year). Roanoke, VA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$811 (+149%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $13,083 +5%
- $245,567$258,650 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $72,650 +39%
- $186,000$258,650 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.
- Ferrum$1,358
- 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 Ferrum, VA rose 5.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Ferrum, Franklin County, Virginia
Ferrum, in Franklin County, had 1,827 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Franklin County was 3.6% in August 2026, and the county had 0.9% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Franklin 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Ferrum is a small community in Franklin County, Virginia, and a very young one, with a median age far below that of most American towns. That fits a place built around Ferrum College, and it means the town feels more like a campus community than a place of long-settled households. Homes here are valued above what the county's household incomes might suggest, though the town's own income figures are not listed here.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and restaurants and hotels also employing many. Across Franklin County, the largest workplaces include Franklin County Public Schools, Ferrum College and Carilion Franklin Memorial Hospital. Unemployment across the county is about where it stood a year ago, and the county has added a few more jobs than it had the year before.
Things to do. W. B. Adams Stadium is in or beside town, and Grassy Hill Natural Area Preserve, a protected area, is a short drive away. A longer drive brings you to Philpott Lake, a reservoir, and to Martinsville Speedway, a race track. Winters are cold and a little snowy, summers are warm, and rain falls fairly evenly through the year.
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What people in Franklin County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Franklin County had 15,810 jobs in 2025, 0.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 47° and lows near 26°; warmest in July, with highs near 87° and lows near 65°. About 13 inches of snow and 49 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Rocky Mount weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Franklin County
- Franklin County Public SchoolsSchool district1,479FTE
- Plygem Rocky Mount - US WindowsWindows and window frames, vinyl, manufacturing1,268
- Franklin CountyGeneral services departments, government563
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters288
- Ferrum CollegeUniversity or college266
- Carilion Franklin Memorial HospitalGeneral hospital254FTE
- Cavco Industries321991219
- Riverbend EnterprisesFoundation, building, poured concrete, contractors167
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 26 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 4,706 people in all across the county; Ferrum has two of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), colleges from IPEDS (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
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Ferrum’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very 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 Franklin County and the Roanoke, VA metro.
Ferrum home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Ferrum$258,650
- Virginia$412,252
- 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.
- Ferrum17
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Ferrum address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Ferrum — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.