Paducah, Kentucky.
Typical home $192,711 (-1.2% in a year), asking rent $1,168 (+8.5%). Paducah, KY-IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$553 (+121%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $2,265 -1%
- $194,976$192,711 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $50,855 +36%
- $141,856$192,711 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.
- Paducah$1,011
- Kentucky$1,212
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 11 years.
Typical home values in Paducah, KY fell 1.2% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Paducah, KY rose 8.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Paducah runs $170/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $291 in Apr 2025.
That is $1,338 a month against $1,168 rent: a $1,011 mortgage payment, plus $120 property tax and $206 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Paducah
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$1,338
- Renting$1,168
- Mortgage only$1,011
Property tax · $120/mo 0.75% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for McCracken County, KY
Insurance & upkeep · $206/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 Paducah, McCracken County, Kentucky
Paducah is a city of 27,137 people in McCracken County. Half its households earn more than $49,915 a year and half less, against $64,373 across McCracken County; 22% of its people live below the poverty line. 55% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 45% are rented. Unemployment in Paducah was 4.0% in August 2026, and McCracken County had 1.2% 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. Paducah is a small city on the river, home to a mix of ages that skews a little older than the country as a whole. Incomes run well below the county's, and more people live below the poverty line than you might expect in a place this size. Most homes are lived in by their owners, though fewer than across the county, and typical home values sit at a modest level. Winters are cold, summers are hot, and there is rain through the year with only a little snow.
Work. Most residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by shops, then restaurants, hotels and entertainment, and professional and business services. Among the largest workplaces in town are Ingram Barge Company, Baptist Health Paducah and Mercy Health Lourdes Hospital. Commutes are short, and unemployment is low and has changed very little over the past year, while the county has added a few more jobs.
Things to do. Within the city itself you can visit Fort Anderson, a fort from the Civil War era, the Hotel Metropolitan, now a museum, and the Rowlandton Mound Site, an archaeological site. A short drive away are Fort Massac, another archaeological site, and the Tennessee River. For a longer outing, Kentucky Lake is a reservoir that makes a good day trip.
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- 11,741households
- 29%of adults have a degree
- 22%below the poverty line
- 16 mintypical commute
- 7%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. McCracken County had 40,975 jobs in 2025, 1.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 43° and lows near 25°; warmest in July, with highs near 89° and lows near 68°. About 3 inches of snow and 49 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Brookport Dam weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Paducah
- Ingram barge CompanyFreight transportation, inland waters2,705
- Baptist Health PaducahGeneral hospital1,142FTE
- Mercy Health Lourdes HospitalGeneral hospital798FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters426
- West Kentucky Community and Technical CollegeTwo-year college406
- Beltline Electric CoElectrical work349
- ViWinTech Windows & DoorsWindows and window frames, vinyl, manufacturing319
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters278
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 72 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 10,944 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
- EarthquakesRelatively high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Paducah’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 McCracken County and the Paducah, KY-IL metro.
Paducah home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Paducah$192,711
- Kentucky$230,909
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Paducah listings, and the typical home goes pending in 25 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.
- Paducah23.78%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Paducah25
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Paducah266
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Paducah76
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Paducah$233,071
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Paducah97.27%
Zip codes with a Paducah address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Paducah — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Paducah
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 42001 | Paducah | 30,856 | $1,248 | $228,131 |
| 42003 | Paducah | 29,672 | $1,075 | $160,963 |