Lake Lure, North Carolina.
Typical home $444,334 (-0.1% in a year), asking rent $1,688 . Forest City, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,382 (+146%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $480 -0%
- $444,813$444,334 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $88,617 +25%
- $355,717$444,334 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.
- Lake Lure$2,332
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 16 years.
Typical home values in Lake Lure, NC fell 0.1% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Lake Lure, Rutherford County, North Carolina
Lake Lure is a town of 1,365 people in Rutherford County. 88% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 12% are rented. Unemployment in Rutherford County was 4.1% in August 2026, and the county had 0.9% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Rutherford County 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Lake Lure is a small town where the people who live here are older than in most of the country, and nearly all of them own their homes. Typical home values run high, well above what the county's incomes would suggest, and rents are steep for a place this size. A large share of adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cold, with highs near freezing at times and only a little snow, summers are warm, and rain and melted snow add up to a good deal over the year.
Work. Residents of Lake Lure work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and professional and business services close behind. Across Rutherford County, the largest workplaces include Rutherford County Schools, Walmart and Rutherford Hospital. Unemployment across the county has eased compared with a year earlier, and the county has added a few more jobs than the year before.
Things to do. The lake the town is named for sits in town, and Chimney Rock State Park lies in or beside it. A short drive away are Hickory Nut Falls and Rainbow Falls, both waterfalls, and the Broad River, which is also close by. Farther afield, a longer drive brings you to the Catawba River and Catawba Falls.
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- 824households
- 58%of adults have a degree
- 12%below the poverty line
What people in Rutherford County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Rutherford County had 18,151 jobs in 2025, 0.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 50° and lows near 28°; warmest in July, with highs near 88° and lows near 66°. About 3 inches of snow and 59 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Lake Lure weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Rutherford County
- Rutherford County SchoolsSchool district1,108FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters402
- Rutherford HospitalGeneral hospital390FTE
- Isothermal Community CollegeTwo-year college343
- TEP HoldingsTower, power distribution and communication, construction268
- The Timken Company210
- Town of Forest CityGeneral public administration191
- Parton Lumber CompanySawmills190
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 42 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 4,754 people in all across the county; Lake Lure has one of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals 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
- Strong windRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively 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 Lake Lure’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 Rutherford County and the Forest City, NC metro.
Lake Lure home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Lake Lure$444,334
- North Carolina$332,159
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Lake Lure listings — 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.
- Lake Lure24.55%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Lake Lure174
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Lake Lure24
Zip codes with a Lake Lure address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Lake Lure — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.