Hickory, North Carolina.
Typical home $292,718 (+1.3% in a year), asking rent $1,522 (+3.2%). Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$889 (+137%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $3,699 +1%
- $289,019$292,718 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $68,203 +30%
- $224,514$292,718 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.
- Hickory$1,536
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in Hickory, NC rose 1.3% over the past year — in step with the nation.
Asking rents in Hickory, NC rose 3.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Hickory runs $469/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $554 in Jul 2024.
That is $1,992 a month against $1,522 rent: a $1,536 mortgage payment, plus $142 property tax and $313 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Hickory
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$1,992
- Renting$1,522
- Mortgage only$1,536
Property tax · $142/mo 0.58% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Catawba County, NC
Insurance & upkeep · $313/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 Hickory, Catawba County, North Carolina
Hickory is a city of 43,490 people in Catawba County. Half its households earn more than $64,576 a year and half less, against $67,864 across Catawba County; 17% of its people live below the poverty line. 55% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 45% are rented. Unemployment in Hickory was 3.7% in August 2026, and Catawba County had about as many jobs in 2025 as the year before. The most residents 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. Hickory is a city in Catawba County, North Carolina, with a population on the younger side of middle age and a mix of owners and renters, though more households own their homes than rent. Incomes in town run a little below the county's, and a fair number of residents live below the poverty line. Winters are cool and summers warm, and the year brings a good deal of rain and melted snow.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, retail and professional and business services also employing a lot of people. Among the largest workplaces in Hickory are Catawba Valley Medical Center, Frye Regional Medical Center and Corning Optical Communications. Unemployment is lower than it was a year earlier, though the county has about as many jobs as it did the year before, and most people have a fairly short commute.
Things to do. The Hickory Museum of Art is in or beside town, and Moretz Stadium is there too. A short drive away are Hickory Motor Speedway, a race track, and the Hickory Aviation Museum. Those who want to get outdoors can make a longer drive to McGalliard Falls, a waterfall, or to Lake Norman, a large reservoir.
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- 18,042households
- 37%of adults have a degree
- 17%below the poverty line
- 21 mintypical commute
- 13%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Catawba County had 89,369 jobs in 2025, about as many as the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 49° and lows near 30°; warmest in July, with highs near 87° and lows near 68°. About 47 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Hickory Faa Airport weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Hickory
- Merchants DistributorsGeneral-line groceries merchant wholesalers1,700
- Catawba Valley Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,533FTE
- Frye Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,029FTE
- Corning Optical CommunicationsFiber optic cable made from purchased fiber optic strand1,016
- Foodservice Hickory739
- City of HickoryOther services to buildings and dwellings714
- BAYADA Home Health CareHome health care469
- Lenoir-Rhyne UniversityUniversity or college467
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 86 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 17,001 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) 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
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- EarthquakesRelatively moderate
- Tornadoesrelatively high in parts of HickoryRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingrelatively high in parts of HickoryRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Hickory’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 Catawba County and the Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC metro.
Hickory home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Hickory$292,718
- North Carolina$332,159
- 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 Hickory listings, and the typical home goes pending in 21 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.
- Hickory29.18%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Hickory21
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Hickory376
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Hickory86
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Hickory$314,384
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Hickory98.66%
Zip codes with a Hickory address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Hickory — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Hickory
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28601 | Hickory | 53,329 | $1,475 | $303,770 |
| 28602 | Hickory | 31,113 | $1,572 | $250,116 |