Rayle, Georgia.
Typical home $181,436 (+10.9% in a year). Athens-Clarke County, GA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$590 (+163%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $17,770 +11%
- $163,666$181,436 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $49,954 +38%
- $131,482$181,436 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.
- Rayle$952
- Georgia$1,727
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 11 years.
Typical home values in Rayle, GA rose 10.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Rayle, Wilkes County, Georgia
Rayle is a town of 158 people in Wilkes County. Unemployment in Wilkes County was 3.9% in August 2026, and the county had 2.7% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Wilkes 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Rayle is a very small town in Wilkes County, Georgia, where neighbors are likely to know one another by name. Homes here cost less than in much of the country, and household incomes across Wilkes County sit modestly in the middle of what many rural counties see.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in shops, manufacturing and the building trades. Across Wilkes County, some of the biggest workplaces are Wilkes County Schools, Wills Memorial Hospital and Ingles Markets. Unemployment across the county is a little higher than a year ago, while the number of jobs there has grown.
Things to do. A short drive away, Callaway Plantation is a museum and Kettle Creek Battlefield is an archaeological site, both good for an afternoon spent on local history. A longer drive brings you to A. H. Stephens State Park, a protected area for walking and time outdoors. Winters are mild with little or no snow, summers get hot, and rain falls fairly steadily through the year, so outdoor trips are possible in most seasons.
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What people in Wilkes County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Wilkes County had 2,770 jobs in 2025, 2.7% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 54° and lows near 34°; warmest in July, with highs near 90° and lows near 70°. About 44 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Washington Ese weather station, 12 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Wilkes County
- Wilkes County SchoolsSchool district252FTE
- Wills Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital108FTE
- Ingles MarketsSupermarkets and other grocery stores92
- Burt LumberDimension lumber, softwood, made from logs or bolts67
- Anthony Forest Products, LLC Subsidiary of Canfor Southern PineLvl manufacturing57
- Wood Specialty CoDimension lumber, softwood, resawing purchased lumber47
- Ashlind ContractingUtility line, construction33
- WashingtonMail and parcel delivery23
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 6 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 319 people in all across the county; Rayle has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (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
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- HurricanesRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Cold wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Rayle’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 Wilkes County and the Athens-Clarke County, GA metro.
Rayle home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Rayle$181,436
- Georgia$329,115
- 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.
Zip codes with a Rayle address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Rayle — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.