Handley, West Virginia.
Typical home $49,167 (-12.6% in a year). Charleston, WV metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$100 (+63%) since Feb 2021.
- 1 year
- Down $7,079 -13%
- $56,246$49,167 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $365 +1%
- $48,802$49,167 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.
- Handley$258
- West Virginia$927
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Handley, WV fell 12.6% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Handley, Kanawha County, West Virginia
Handley is a town of 223 people in Kanawha County. 96% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 4% are rented. Unemployment in Kanawha County was 4.0% in August 2026, and the county had 1.9% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Kanawha 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Handley is a very small town in Kanawha County, West Virginia, where almost every home is lived in by the people who own it. Poverty is lower than you might expect for a place with homes this modestly priced, and few adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cold, with January highs staying above freezing but lows well below it, and summers turn warm in July. Rain and melted snow add up to a fair amount over the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with shops, professional and business services, and government also employing many. Across Kanawha County, the largest workplaces include Charleston Area Medical Center, Kanawha County Schools and Thomas Memorial Hospital. The typical commute is a fairly long one, and very few people work from home. The county has seen slightly fewer jobs than a year earlier, and unemployment has eased a little over the past year.
Things to do. Water is the main theme here. Hughes Creek, Paint Creek and Staten Run are all in or beside town, and Kellys Creek, Armstrong Creek and Seneca Creek are a short drive away. For a bigger outing, Babcock State Park and New River Gorge National Park and Preserve are a longer drive away, and both are protected areas of wooded, rugged country.
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- 3%of adults have a degree
- 4%below the poverty line
- 29 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What people in Kanawha County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Kanawha County had 95,946 jobs in 2025, 1.9% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 43° and lows near 26°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 66°. About 46 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the London Locks weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Kanawha County
- Charleston Area Medical CenterGeneral hospital6,949FTE
- CAMC Memorial DivisionGeneral medical and surgical hospitals3,890
- Kanawha County SchoolsSchool district3,592FTE
- Thomas Memorial HospitalGeneral hospital760FTE
- GestampJob stampings, automotive, metal, manufacturing650
- Niterra North AmericaCoils, ignition, internal combustion engines, manufacturing525
- Charleston WV PDCMail and parcel delivery483
- University of CharlestonUniversity or college436
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 157 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 23,318 people in all across the county; Handley 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
- Inland floodingVery high
- LightningRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Handley’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 Kanawha County and the Charleston, WV metro.
Handley home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Handley$49,167
- West Virginia$176,576
- 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 Handley address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Handley — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.