New Castle, Pennsylvania.
Typical home $151,472 (+5.1% in a year), asking rent $931 (+10.0%). New Castle, PA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$434 (+120%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $7,385 +5%
- $144,087$151,472 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $33,395 +28%
- $118,077$151,472 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.
- New Castle$795
- Pennsylvania$1,507
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in New Castle, PA rose 5.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in New Castle, PA rose 10.0% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in New Castle runs $195/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $321 in May 2024.
That is $1,126 a month against $931 rent: a $795 mortgage payment, plus $169 property tax and $162 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — New Castle
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$1,126
- Renting$931
- Mortgage only$795
Property tax · $169/mo 1.34% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Lawrence County, PA
Insurance & upkeep · $162/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 New Castle, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania
New Castle is a city of 21,926 people in Lawrence County. Half its households earn more than $42,219 a year and half less, against $61,931 across Lawrence County; 28% of its people live below the poverty line. 55% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 45% are rented. Unemployment in New Castle was 5.3% in August 2026, and Lawrence County had 1.6% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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. New Castle is a small city in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, with a population that has settled at a modest size. Incomes run well below the county's, and a good many more residents live below the poverty line than is typical. A majority of homes are lived in by their owners, though renting is common too, and typical home values and rents are on the lower side. Winters are cold, with snow most years, summers turn warm, and rain and melted snow come through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with shops, manufacturing, and professional and business services also employing a share. Among the largest workplaces in New Castle are UPMC Jameson, a general hospital, New Castle Area Schools, and Ellwood Quality Steels, a steel mill. Unemployment has eased compared with a year earlier, and a typical commute is fairly short. Fewer adults hold a four-year degree than in many places.
Things to do. Cascade Park, an amusement park, sits in or beside town. A short drive away are the Shenango River and McConnells Mill State Park, a protected area. For a museum visit, the Butler Institute of American Art is a longer drive away.
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- 9,406households
- 16%of adults have a degree
- 28%below the poverty line
- 22 mintypical commute
- 12%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Lawrence County had 27,269 jobs in 2025, 1.6% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 37° and lows near 19°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 60°. About 28 inches of snow and 42 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the New Castle North weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in New Castle
- Upmc JamesonGeneral hospital762FTE
- Help At HomeHomemaker's service for elderly or disabled persons, non-medical680
- New Castle Area SDSchool district345FTE
- Ellwood Quality SteelsSteel mills245
- Quality Life Services New CastleSkilled nursing facilities154
- Haven Convalescent HomeSkilled nursing facilities130
- New Castle PA SDCMail and parcel delivery109
- Holistic FarmsAlfalfa sprout farming, grown under cover108
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 27 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,430 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts 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
- Inland floodingrelatively high in parts of New CastleRelatively moderate
- Lightningrelatively high in parts of New CastleRelatively 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 New Castle’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 Lawrence County and the New Castle, PA metro.
New Castle home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- New Castle$151,472
- Pennsylvania$287,078
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 New Castle listings, and the typical home goes pending in 17 days — the market is roughly in balance.
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.
- New Castle23.77%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- New Castle17
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- New Castle213
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- New Castle59
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- New Castle$162,981
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- New Castle97.12%
Zip codes with a New Castle address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls New Castle — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in New Castle
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16101 | New Castle | 30,767 | $919 | $125,789 |
| 16105 | New Castle | 15,418 | — | $217,764 |
| 16102 | New Castle | 4,929 | — | $125,486 |