Penhook, Virginia.
Typical home $504,388 (+2.8% in a year). Roanoke, VA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,455 (+122%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $13,972 +3%
- $490,416$504,388 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $90,819 +22%
- $413,568$504,388 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.
- Penhook$2,647
- Virginia$2,164
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 17 years.
Typical home values in Penhook, VA rose 2.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Penhook, Franklin County, Virginia
Penhook, in Franklin County, had 782 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Franklin County was 3.6% in August 2026, and the county had 0.9% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Franklin 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Penhook is a very small community in Franklin County, Virginia, where neighbors are likely to know one another. Homes here are typically valued well above what many people expect from a place this size. Nobody in the town is recorded as living below the poverty line, and unemployment across the county is steady, about where it was a year earlier.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in manufacturing, shops, and restaurants and hotels. Across Franklin County, the largest workplaces include Franklin County Public Schools, the vinyl window manufacturer Plygem Rocky Mount - US Windows, and Carilion Franklin Memorial Hospital. The county has added a few more jobs over the past year.
Things to do. Smith Mountain Lake, a reservoir, and Smith Mountain Lake State Park are both a short drive away, and the Blackwater River and Pigg River are close by as well. For a longer outing, the Booker T. Washington National Monument is a museum a longer drive away, as is Martinsville Speedway, a race track. Winters are cool and bring some snow, summers are warm, and rain falls fairly evenly through the year.
Report a mistake
- 0%below the poverty line
What people in Franklin County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Franklin County had 15,810 jobs in 2025, 0.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 47° and lows near 26°; warmest in July, with highs near 87° and lows near 65°. About 13 inches of snow and 49 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Rocky Mount weather station, 14 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Franklin County
- Franklin County Public SchoolsSchool district1,479FTE
- Plygem Rocky Mount - US WindowsWindows and window frames, vinyl, manufacturing1,268
- Franklin CountyGeneral services departments, government563
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters288
- Ferrum CollegeUniversity or college266
- Carilion Franklin Memorial HospitalGeneral hospital254FTE
- Cavco Industries321991219
- Riverbend EnterprisesFoundation, building, poured concrete, contractors167
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 26 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 4,706 people in all across the county; Penhook has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Penhook’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 Franklin County and the Roanoke, VA metro.
Penhook home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Penhook$504,388
- Virginia$412,252
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 6 Penhook 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.
- Penhook17.02%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Penhook29
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Penhook address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Penhook — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.