Hayesville, North Carolina.
Typical home $347,037 (-0.5% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,087 (+148%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $1,868 -1%
- $348,905$347,037 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $70,301 +25%
- $276,736$347,037 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.
- Hayesville$1,822
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Hayesville, NC fell 0.5% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Hayesville, Clay County, North Carolina
Hayesville is a town of 461 people in Clay County. Unemployment in Clay County was 3.4% in August 2026, and the county had 2.3% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Clay 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Hayesville is a very small mountain town and the seat of Clay County in western North Carolina. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm without being hot. Homes here are valued well above what many people expect for a place this size, and a sizable share of residents live below the poverty line. Few adults hold a four-year degree, and only a small number work from home.
Work. Most residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with shops, restaurants and hotels, and the building trades also employing many. Among the largest workplaces in Hayesville are Clay County Schools and Avardis Health. Unemployment across Clay County is lower than it was a year ago, and the county has added jobs over the past year.
Things to do. Chatuge Lake, a reservoir, is a short drive away, and in or beside town there are the Spikebuck Town Mound and Village Site, an archaeological site, and the Fred Hamilton Rhododendron Garden, a botanical garden. For a longer drive, Blue Hole Falls is a waterfall, and the Nantahala National Forest offers protected woodland to explore.
Report a mistake
- 19%of adults have a degree
- 24%below the poverty line
- 6%work from home
What people in Clay County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Clay County had 2,233 jobs in 2025, 2.3% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 49° and lows near 24°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 62°.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Hayesville Northeast weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Hayesville
- Clay County SchoolsSchool district203FTE
- Avardis HealthSkilled nursing facilities79
- HayesvilleMail and parcel delivery27
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 2 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 106 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (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
- LightningRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Hayesville’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. 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 Clay County.
Hayesville home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Hayesville$347,037
- North Carolina$332,159
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Hayesville listings, and the typical home goes pending in 62 days — the market is cooling.
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.
- Hayesville25.75%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Hayesville166
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Hayesville29
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Hayesville address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Hayesville — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.