Salisbury, North Carolina.
Typical home $280,462 (-0.2% in a year), asking rent $1,393 (+3.5%). Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$831 (+130%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $554 -0%
- $281,016$280,462 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $51,316 +22%
- $229,145$280,462 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.
- Salisbury$1,472
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 17 years.
Typical home values in Salisbury, NC fell 0.2% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Salisbury, NC rose 3.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Salisbury runs $532/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $674 in Oct 2023.
That is $1,925 a month against $1,393 rent: a $1,472 mortgage payment, plus $152 property tax and $300 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Salisbury
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$1,925
- Renting$1,393
- Mortgage only$1,472
Property tax · $152/mo 0.65% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Rowan County, NC
Insurance & upkeep · $300/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 Salisbury, Rowan County, North Carolina
Salisbury is a city of 35,540 people in Rowan County. Half its households earn more than $53,716 a year and half less, against $65,725 across Rowan County; 26% of its people live below the poverty line. 52% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 48% are rented. Unemployment in Salisbury was 4.2% in August 2026, and Rowan County had 1.0% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then professional services.
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. Salisbury is a city in Rowan County, and its residents are somewhat younger than the typical American. Household incomes run well below the county's as a whole, and a larger share of people here live below the poverty line than is usual. Owners and renters are fairly evenly mixed among the homes here, with owners a little ahead. Winters are cold but short on snow, summers turn hot, and rain falls through much of the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with professional and business services, manufacturing and shops also employing a good number. Among the largest workplaces in Salisbury are the Veterans Health Administration, Rowan-Salisbury Schools and Rowan Regional Hospital. Unemployment has eased compared with a year ago, and the county has added a few more jobs. A typical commute is a short one, and some people work from home.
Things to do. In or beside town, the Rowan Museum and Grimes Mill, a museum, offer a look at local history, and Alumni Memorial Stadium is close by as well. A short drive away is the North Carolina Transportation Museum. For a day on the water, High Rock Lake, a reservoir, is a longer drive away.
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- 14,043households
- 30%of adults have a degree
- 26%below the poverty line
- 22 mintypical commute
- 9%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Rowan County had 51,121 jobs in 2025, 1.0% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 50° and lows near 29°; warmest in July, with highs near 88° and lows near 69°. About 2 inches of snow and 44 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Salisbury weather station, a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Salisbury
- Veterans Health AdministrationFederal government · Department of Veterans Affairs2,470
- Rowan-Salisbury SchoolsSchool district2,210FTE
- Food LionBusiness services1,947
- Rowan Regional HospitalGeneral hospital1,039FTE
- Rowan-Cabarrus Community CollegeTwo-year college993
- ADUSA Dist DC 10 SalisburyGeneral warehousing and stora889
- ADUSA Services - Salisbury - Harrison RdBusiness services818
- Rowan County GovernmentGeneral public administration563
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 63 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 10,772 people in all. Federal offices come from OPM's federal workforce data (2026), school districts 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
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Salisbury’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 Rowan County and the Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC metro.
Salisbury home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Salisbury$280,462
- North Carolina$332,159
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Salisbury listings, and the typical home goes pending in 38 days — 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.
- Salisbury28.20%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Salisbury38
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Salisbury388
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Salisbury78
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Salisbury$272,708
- United States$371,407
Zip codes with a Salisbury address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Salisbury — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Salisbury
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28146 | Salisbury | 31,292 | $1,529 | $302,505 |
| 28144 | Salisbury | 27,977 | $1,581 | $230,775 |
| 28147 | Salisbury | 25,812 | $1,170 | $295,965 |