Pound, Virginia.
Typical home $123,315 (+6.0% in a year). Big Stone Gap, VA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$383 (+145%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $6,954 +6%
- $116,361$123,315 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $31,685 +35%
- $91,630$123,315 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.
- Pound$647
- Virginia$2,164
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Pound, VA rose 6.0% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Pound, Wise County, Virginia
Pound is a town of 877 people in Wise County. Unemployment in Wise County was 4.9% in August 2026, and the county had 0.1% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Wise 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Pound is a very small town in the mountains of Wise County, Virginia, where most people know one another by sight. Homes here are inexpensive compared with much of the country, and incomes across Wise County run below the typical American household's. Winters are cold and snowy, summers are warm, and rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in restaurants and hotels, and in government. Across Wise County, some of the largest workplaces are Wise County Public Schools, Lonesome Pine Hospital and the University of Virginia's College at Wise. Fewer adults hold a four-year degree than across the country, the drive to work is a fairly long one, and some people work from home.
Things to do. Right in or beside town are the North Fork Pound Reservoir and the Clinch Ranger District, a protected stretch of national forest. A short drive away are the Ralph Stanley Museum, honoring the mountain-music legend, and Pine Mountain Trail State Park, a long ridgeline park. A longer drive brings you to Breaks Interstate Park, another protected area, which reaches across the state line.
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- 16%of adults have a degree
- 27 mintypical commute
- 9%work from home
What people in Wise County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Wise County had 10,958 jobs in 2025, 0.1% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 42° and lows near 22°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 61°. About 38 inches of snow and 49 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Clintwood 1W weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Wise County
- Wise County Public SchoolsSchool district968FTE
- Wallens Ridge State PrisonPrisons465
- Virginia Department of CorrectionsPrisons456
- Lonesome Pine HospitalGeneral hospital378FTE
- University of Virginia's College at WiseUniversity or college336
- Mountain Empire Community CollegeTwo-year college240
- Mullican Flooring - NortonParquet flooring, hardwood, manufacturing187
- American HealthCareNursing care facilities179
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 22 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 2,687 people in all across the county; Pound 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
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- WildfireRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingrelatively high in parts of PoundRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Pound’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 Wise County and the Big Stone Gap, VA metro.
Pound home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Pound$123,315
- Virginia$412,252
- 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.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Pound11
Zip codes with a Pound address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Pound — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.