Sonora, Kentucky.
Typical home $216,991 (-6.3% in a year). Elizabethtown-Fort Knox, KY metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$581 (+104%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $14,531 -6%
- $231,522$216,991 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $29,980 +16%
- $187,011$216,991 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.
- Sonora$1,139
- Kentucky$1,212
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 23 years.
Typical home values in Sonora, KY fell 6.3% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Sonora, Hardin County, Kentucky
Sonora is a city of 565 people in Hardin County. Unemployment in Hardin County was 4.7% in August 2026, and the county had 0.4% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in manufacturing, then schools and health care.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Sonora is a very small city in Hardin County, Kentucky, with a population that stays small enough for neighbors to know one another. Homes here are typically valued a good deal below what many buyers elsewhere would expect to pay. Fewer adults hold a four-year degree here than across the country as a whole. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, while summers are warm, with July the warmest. Rain and melted snow add up to a fair amount over the course of a year.
Work. Residents work mostly in manufacturing, in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, and in government. Across Hardin County, the largest workplaces include Hardin County Schools, Baptist Health Hardin and Metalsa. The typical commute is a moderate one, and few people work from home. Unemployment across the county is about where it was a year earlier, and the number of jobs there slipped slightly over the past year.
Things to do. The Nolin River is a short drive away and is the closest spot for time by the water. Farther afield, a longer drive brings you to Mammoth Cave National Park, the national park known for its cave system. The Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, a protected area, is also a longer drive from town.
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- 16%of adults have a degree
- 12%below the poverty line
- 25 mintypical commute
- 5%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Hardin County had 48,702 jobs in 2025, 0.4% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 43° and lows near 23°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 65°. About 53 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Millerstown 4E weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Hardin County
- Hardin County SchoolsSchool district2,294FTE
- Baptist Health HardinGeneral hospital1,485FTE
- MetalsaAir filters, automotive, truck, and bus, manufacturing1,484
- Altec IndustriesManufacturing1,231
- Akebono ElizabethtownBrake caliper assemblies, automotive, truck, and bus, manufacturing540
- Elizabethtown Community and Technical CollegeTwo-year college410
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters394
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters358
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 96 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 14,198 people in all across the county; Sonora has none of its own. School districts come 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
- Strong windRelatively high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- HailRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Sonora’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 Hardin County and the Elizabethtown-Fort Knox, KY metro.
Sonora home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Sonora$216,991
- Kentucky$230,909
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
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.
- Sonora9
Zip codes with a Sonora address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Sonora — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.