Norfork, Arkansas.
Typical home $263,882 (-0.9% in a year). Mountain Home, AR metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$726 (+110%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $2,295 -1%
- $266,177$263,882 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $36,397 +16%
- $227,485$263,882 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.
- Norfork$1,385
- Arkansas$1,177
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 23 years.
Typical home values in Norfork, AR fell 0.9% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Norfork, Baxter County, Arkansas
Norfork is a city of 465 people in Baxter County. Unemployment in Baxter County was 3.8% in August 2026, and the county had 1.7% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Baxter 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Norfork is a very small city in the Ozark hills of north Arkansas, in Baxter County. Homes here are priced well above what incomes across the county would suggest, which tends to reflect the pull of the water and the hills nearby. Winters are cold but short on snow, summers are warm, and rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Most residents who work are employed in schools, hospitals and social care, with shops, manufacturing and the building trades close behind. Very few work from home. Across Baxter County, the largest workplaces include Baxter Regional Medical Center, the Mountain Home School District and Walmart, and the county has added jobs over the past year. Unemployment across the county is lower than it was a year earlier.
Things to do. The Norfork National Fish Hatchery, a park, and Norfork Tailwater, a stretch of water below the dam, are both a short drive away. For a longer outing, Blanchard Springs Caverns is a tourist attraction, and Bull Shoals Lake is a large reservoir, each a longer drive away.
Report a mistake
- 1%work from home
What people in Baxter County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Baxter County had 16,448 jobs in 2025, 1.7% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 46° and lows near 25°; warmest in July, with highs near 88° and lows near 65°. About 7 inches of snow and 49 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Calico Rock Wsw weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Baxter County
- Baxter Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,427FTE
- Mountain Home School DistrictSchool district580FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters502
- Danfoss Power Solutions IIHydraulic hoses, rubber or plastics, manufacturing329
- Baxter HealthcarePlastics film and unlaminated sheet manufacturing238
- Arkansas State University-Mountain HomeTwo-year college185
- Cotter School DistrictSchool district160FTE
- Arkansas Boats LLC Bass & Yar-CraftBoat yards153
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 26 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 4,531 people in all across the county; Norfork has one of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) 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 stormsVery high
- Strong windVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- LightningRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Norfork’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. 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 Baxter County and the Mountain Home, AR metro.
Norfork home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Norfork$263,882
- Arkansas$224,158
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 6 Norfork listings — 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.
- Norfork17.67%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Norfork21
Zip codes with a Norfork address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Norfork — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.