Smiley, Texas.
Typical home $272,676 (-4.3% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$148 (+11%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Down $12,177 -4%
- $284,854$272,676 since Sep 2025
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.
- Smiley$1,431
- Texas$1,556
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Smiley, TX fell 4.3% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Smiley, Gonzales County, Texas
Smiley is a city of 475 people in Gonzales County. Unemployment in Gonzales County was 4.2% in August 2026, and the county had 2.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Gonzales County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 24 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Smiley is a very small Texas city in Gonzales County, with few residents and a quiet, rural feel. Homes here are valued well above what the county's modest household incomes might suggest, and very few adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are mild and brief, with little or no snow, while summers turn hot, and rain falls across the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, farming and shops also employing many. Across Gonzales County, the largest workplaces include Gonzales ISD, Holmes Foods and Kitchen Pride Mushroom Farm. Unemployment in the county has risen a little over the past year, while the number of jobs there has grown.
Things to do. Getting out of town means a longer drive in every direction. The San Marcos River is the best known of the nearby places, and Palmetto State Park is a protected area that is also a longer drive away. Lake Gonzales offers a lake closer to home than most, though it too takes a longer drive to reach.
Report a mistake
- 3%of adults have a degree
What people in Gonzales County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Gonzales County had 7,340 jobs in 2025, 2.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 65° and lows near 38°; warmest in August, with highs near 97° and lows near 72°. About 34 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Nixon weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Gonzales County
- Gonzales ISDSchool district423FTE
- Holmes FoodsPoultry slaughtering, dressing, and packing325
- Kitchen Pride Mushroom FarmMushroom farming249
- Nixon-smiley CisdSchool district213FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters205
- H-E-BRetail164
- Gonzales Healthcare SystemsGeneral hospital158FTE
- Adams Extract & SpiceExtracts, food, manufacturing153
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 19 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,797 people in all across the county; Smiley 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
- Inland floodingVery high
- HailVery high
- Strong windVery high
- HurricanesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Smiley’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very high. 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 Gonzales County.
Smiley home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Smiley$272,676
- Texas$296,424
- 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.
- Smiley6
Zip codes with a Smiley address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Smiley — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.