Rutledge, Tennessee.
Typical home $278,363 (+8.8% in a year). Morristown, TN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$825 (+130%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $22,457 +9%
- $255,906$278,363 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $56,918 +26%
- $221,445$278,363 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.
- Rutledge$1,461
- Tennessee$1,737
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Rutledge, TN rose 8.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Rutledge, Grainger County, Tennessee
Rutledge is a town of 1,321 people in Grainger County. Unemployment in Grainger County was 3.6% in August 2026, and the county had 2.4% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Grainger 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Rutledge is a small town and the seat of Grainger County, in the hills of East Tennessee. Incomes across the county run below the typical American household's, and fewer adults here hold a four-year degree than in most places. Winters are cool and fairly short, with only a little snow, and summers are warm, with plenty of rain through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and the building trades also employing many. Across Grainger County, the largest workplaces include Grainger County Schools, the Clayton manufactured home plants and the K VA T Food Stores supermarkets. Jobs in the county dipped a little last year, and the commute to work is a fairly long one for many people.
Things to do. Cherokee Lake, a reservoir, and Panther Creek State Park are both a short drive away, which makes boating, fishing and walks in the woods easy to fit into a day. Farther afield, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park is a longer drive, and so is Zoo Knoxville for a day out in the city.
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- 607households
- 14%of adults have a degree
- 28 mintypical commute
- 3%work from home
What people in Grainger County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Grainger County had 4,198 jobs in 2025, 2.4% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 46° and lows near 29°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 68°. About 10 inches of snow and 47 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Morristown Weather Office weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Grainger County
- Grainger County SchoolsSchool district455FTE
- ClaytonManufactured home manufacturing314
- ClaytonManufactured home manufacturing303
- K VA T Food StoresSupermarket170
- Life Care Centers of AmericaSkilled nursing facilities109
- FILMtechFlexible packaging, plastics film, manufacturing80
- Red Diamond EnterprisesVegetable and melon farming, potato dominant crop, field and seed production53
- Bean StationMail and parcel delivery21
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 8 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,071 people in all across the county; Rutledge has two of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (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
- Strong windRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Rutledge’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 Grainger County and the Morristown, TN metro.
Rutledge home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Rutledge$278,363
- Tennessee$330,844
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Rutledge 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.
- Rutledge27.03%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Rutledge41
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Rutledge8
Zip codes with a Rutledge address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Rutledge — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.