Hale Center, Texas.
Typical home $110,132 (-10.0% in a year). Plainview, TX metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$119 (+26%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $12,265 -10%
- $122,397$110,132 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $33,980 -24%
- $144,112$110,132 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.
- Hale Center$578
- Texas$1,556
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Hale Center, TX fell 10.0% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Hale Center, Hale County, Texas
Hale Center is a city of 2,062 people in Hale County. 84% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 16% are rented. Unemployment in Hale County was 4.4% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Hale 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Hale Center is a small city on the High Plains of Texas, where homes are mostly lived in by their owners, more so than in many towns of its size. Typical home values sit at a modest level, and a good share of residents live below the poverty line. Few adults hold a four-year degree, and most people get to work in a short drive.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in the building trades, and in farming. Across Hale County, some of the largest workplaces are Plainview ISD, Covenant Hospital Plainview and Wayland Baptist University. Jobs across the county slipped a little last year, and unemployment is about where it was a year ago.
Things to do. Winters here are cold and summers are hot, with a little snow in most years and fairly dry weather overall. For a day out, Silent Wings Museum is a museum on the longer drive list, and Jaycee Park is a stadium that is also a longer drive away. Running Water Draw, a river, is another longer drive from town.
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- 7%of adults have a degree
- 18%below the poverty line
- 18 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What people in Hale County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Hale County had 10,840 jobs in 2025, 0.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 53° and lows near 24°; warmest in July, with highs near 91° and lows near 67°. About 7 inches of snow and 18 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Plainview Wtr Productn weather station, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Hale County
- WalmartGeneral warehousing and storage1,155
- Plainview ISDSchool district664FTE
- Wayland Baptist UniversityUniversity or college537
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters296
- Azteca MillingMeal, corn, for human consumption made in flour mills274
- Covenant Hospital PlainviewGeneral hospital235FTE
- United SupermarketsSupermarket168
- Abernathy ISDSchool district132FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 31 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,355 people in all across the county; Hale Center has one 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
- HailVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Strong windVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Hale Center’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 Hale County and the Plainview, TX metro.
Hale Center home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Hale Center$110,132
- Texas$296,424
- 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.
- Hale Center8
Zip codes with a Hale Center address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Hale Center — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.