Light Oak, North Carolina.
Typical home $125,147 (-14.2% in a year). Shelby, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — $118 (-15%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Down $20,782 -14%
- $145,929$125,147 since Sep 2025
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.
- Light Oak$657
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Light Oak, NC fell 14.2% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Light Oak, Cleveland County, North Carolina
Light Oak, in Cleveland County, had 697 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Cleveland County was 4.3% in August 2026, and the county had 2.0% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Cleveland 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Light Oak is a small community in Cleveland County, North Carolina, with a population that makes it feel more like a neighborhood than a town. Homes here cost less than in much of the country, and household incomes across Cleveland County sit below the national picture. Winters are cool and fairly short, summers are hot, and snow is uncommon, with plenty of rain through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, retail and professional and business services also employing many. Across Cleveland County, the largest workplaces include Cleveland County Schools, Atrium Health Cleveland and Gardner-Webb University. Unemployment across the county has eased a little over the past year, though the county has fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. The Kings Mountain Historical Museum is a short drive away and is a good place to learn about the area's past. A longer drive brings you to Crowders Mountain State Park, a protected area for hiking and open air, and Kings Mountain National Military Park, an archaeological site tied to the Revolutionary War. Lake Wylie, also a longer drive, offers time on the water.
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What people in Cleveland County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Cleveland County had 35,958 jobs in 2025, 2.0% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 53° and lows near 27°; warmest in July, with highs near 91° and lows near 66°. About 4 inches of snow and 50 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Shelby Northwest weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cleveland County
- Cleveland County SchoolsSchool district1,851FTE
- Atrium Health ClevelandGeneral hospital1,597FTE
- WalmartGeneral warehousing and storage1,422
- Gardner-Webb UniversityUniversity or college608
- Cleveland Community CollegeTwo-year college567
- Catawba Two Kings Casino494
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters440
- Electric Glass Fiber AmericaGlass fiber, textile type, made in glass making plants404
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 89 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 12,307 people in all across the county; Light Oak has none 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
- LightningRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Light Oak’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 Cleveland County and the Shelby, NC metro.
Light Oak home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Light Oak$125,147
- North Carolina$332,159
- 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 Light Oak address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Light Oak — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.