Frankfort, Kentucky.
Typical home $249,495 (-0.0% in a year), asking rent $989 (+0.3%). Frankfort, KY metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$742 (+131%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $7 -0%
- $249,502$249,495 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $59,109 +31%
- $190,386$249,495 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.
- Frankfort$1,310
- Kentucky$1,212
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in Frankfort, KY fell 0.0% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Frankfort, KY rose 0.3% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Frankfort runs $753/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $806 in May 2025.
That is $1,741 a month against $989 rent: a $1,310 mortgage payment, plus $165 property tax and $267 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Frankfort
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$1,741
- Renting$989
- Mortgage only$1,310
Property tax · $165/mo 0.79% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Franklin County, KY
Insurance & upkeep · $267/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Frankfort, Franklin County, Kentucky
Frankfort is a city of 28,602 people in Franklin County. Half its households earn more than $53,073 a year and half less, against $65,298 across Franklin County; 19% of its people live below the poverty line. 49% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 51% are rented. Unemployment in Frankfort was 4.2% in August 2026, and Franklin County had 1.4% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in government, then schools and health care.
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. Frankfort is the capital of Kentucky, a small city on the Kentucky River where much of daily life follows the rhythm of state government. Homes here are more often rented than across most of the country, and household incomes run below the county's overall. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, summers are hot, and rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Government is the largest source of work for people who live here, followed by schools, hospitals and social care, then professional and business services and shops. Among the biggest workplaces in town are the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet's central office, Franklin County Schools and Buffalo Trace Distillery. Commutes are short, and only a small number of people work from home.
Things to do. Fort Hill, an archaeological site, sits in or beside town, and Alumni Field, a stadium, is also close by. Elkhorn Creek, a river, is a short drive away, and the Kentucky Horse Park, a protected area, is a longer drive.
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- 12,906households
- 28%of adults have a degree
- 19%below the poverty line
- 17 mintypical commute
- 11%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Franklin County had 35,322 jobs in 2025, 1.4% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 43° and lows near 25°; warmest in July, with highs near 88° and lows near 67°. About 47 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Frankfort Capital City Airport weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Frankfort
- KYTC Central Office1,161
- Franklin County SchoolsSchool district975FTE
- Buffalo Trace DistilleryDistilleries852
- Public Protection CabinetGeneral services departments, government687
- Kentucky State UniversityUniversity or college456
- Frankfort RegionalGeneral hospital387FTE
- KY Department of CorrectionsPrisons249
- Education and Labor CabinetExecutive offices, federal, state, and local208
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 28 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 5,133 people in all. 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 high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
- Cold wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Frankfort’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 Franklin County and the Frankfort, KY metro.
Frankfort home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Frankfort$249,495
- Kentucky$230,909
- 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 3 Frankfort listings, and the typical home goes pending in 22 days — 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.
- Frankfort30.23%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Frankfort22
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Frankfort185
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Frankfort59
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Frankfort$270,571
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Frankfort99.18%
Zip codes with a Frankfort address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Frankfort — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.