Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
Typical home $186,496 (+0.3% in a year), asking rent $1,259 (+2.9%). Rocky Mount, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$589 (+151%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $497 +0%
- $185,998$186,496 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $46,402 +33%
- $140,093$186,496 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.
- Rocky Mount$979
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Rocky Mount, NC rose 0.3% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Rocky Mount, NC rose 2.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Rocky Mount runs $30/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $189 in Oct 2023.
That is $1,289 a month against $1,259 rent: a $979 mortgage payment, plus $111 property tax and $200 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Rocky Mount
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$1,289
- Renting$1,259
- Mortgage only$979
Property tax · $111/mo 0.71% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Nash County, NC
Insurance & upkeep · $200/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 Rocky Mount, Nash County, North Carolina
Rocky Mount is a city of 54,341 people in Nash County. Half its households earn more than $55,534 a year and half less, against $62,426 across Nash County; 20% of its people live below the poverty line. 49% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 51% are rented. Unemployment in Rocky Mount was 6.1% in August 2026, and Nash County had 1.9% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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. Rocky Mount is a city in Nash County, North Carolina, home to a good many people, with residents who are somewhat older than in many American towns. Incomes run below the county's, and a larger share of households live below the poverty line than is typical. Fewer homes are lived in by their owners than renters' homes, so the town has a large rental market alongside its houses. Winters are cool, with highs near freezing only on the coldest days and snow that is light and occasional, while summers turn hot, and rain falls fairly steadily through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, retail, and restaurants and hotels also employing large numbers. Among the largest workplaces in Rocky Mount are Nash Hospitals, Barnhill Contracting Company and Honeywell. Unemployment has eased a little compared with a year earlier, and Nash County has added jobs over the past year. A four-year degree is held by a minority of adults, and the typical commute is short, with a small number of people working from home.
Things to do. Medoc Mountain State Park is a protected area of woods and trails, a longer drive away. Buckhorn Reservoir, also a longer drive away, is a body of water suited to a quiet day out. In town or nearby, the Imagination Station Science Museum is a good stop for families, and Southern National Motorsports Park is a race track, both a longer drive away.
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- 23,364households
- 23%of adults have a degree
- 20%below the poverty line
- 21 mintypical commute
- 9%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Nash County had 40,231 jobs in 2025, 1.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 50° and lows near 31°; warmest in July, with highs near 88° and lows near 69°. About 3 inches of snow and 49 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Rocky Mount Ese weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Rocky Mount
- Nash HospitalsGeneral hospital1,602FTE
- Barnhill Contracting CompanyOverpass construction1,012
- First Carolina ManagementHotel management services497
- HoneywellAircraft engine and engine parts manufacturing428
- DormakabaKey blanks, metal, manufacturing330
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters321
- North Carolina Wesleyan UniversityUniversity or college313
- Acme United Corp Rocky MountBonded warehousing, general merchandise168
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 58 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 6,252 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
- Winter weatherVery high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- HurricanesRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
- Strong windrelatively high in parts of Rocky MountRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Rocky Mount’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. 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 Nash County and the Rocky Mount, NC metro.
Rocky Mount home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Rocky Mount$186,496
- North Carolina$332,159
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Rocky Mount listings, and the typical home goes pending in 43 days — the market is cooling.
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.
- Rocky Mount28.66%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Rocky Mount43
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Rocky Mount332
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Rocky Mount68
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Rocky Mount$193,442
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Rocky Mount96.81%
Zip codes with a Rocky Mount address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Rocky Mount — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Rocky Mount
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27804 | Rocky Mount | 30,713 | $1,437 | $226,844 |
| 27803 | Rocky Mount | 20,055 | $1,249 | $204,001 |
| 27801 | Rocky Mount | 19,532 | $977 | $121,234 |