Spray, Oregon.
Typical home $391,198 (+7.3% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,180 (+135%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $26,676 +7%
- $364,523$391,198 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $66,913 +21%
- $324,285$391,198 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.
- Spray$2,053
- Oregon$2,586
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 18 years.
Typical home values in Spray, OR rose 7.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Spray, Wheeler County, Oregon
Spray is a town of 139 people in Wheeler County. Unemployment in Wheeler County was 3.8% in August 2026, and the county had 2.8% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Wheeler County work in schools and health care, then government.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Spray is a very small town in Wheeler County, Oregon, where people tend to know one another and the pace is quiet. Homes here are valued well above what the county's incomes might suggest, which is worth knowing for anyone weighing a move. Winters are cold, with the coldest weather in December, and summers turn hot by August. The year brings only modest rain and melted snow.
Work. Residents of Spray work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with government, the building trades, and farming, forestry and mining also providing livelihoods. Across Wheeler County, the largest workplaces include Mitchell SD 55, Fossil SD 21J and the Fossil Elderly Housing Committee. Unemployment across the county is a little lower than a year ago, though there were somewhat fewer jobs in the county last year than the year before.
Things to do. The North Fork John Day River is a short drive away and is the closest place for time by the water. A longer drive brings you to John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, a protected area, and to the Painted Hills, another protected area. Together they make for good day trips from town.
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What people in Wheeler County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Wheeler County had 352 jobs in 2025, 2.8% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 43° and lows near 23°; warmest in August, with highs near 94° and lows near 50°. About 15 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Monument weather station, 18 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Wheeler County
- Mitchell SD 55School district82FTE
- Fossil SD 21JSchool district62FTE
- Fossil Elderly Housing CommitteeRetirement communities, continuing care25
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 1 workplace with 20 or more staff, 25 people in all across the county; Spray has none 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
- LightningVery high
- WildfireRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Spray’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively 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 Wheeler County.
Spray home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Spray$391,198
- Oregon$492,753
- 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.
Zip codes with a Spray address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Spray — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Spray
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 97750 | Mitchell | 416 | — | $382,336 |
| 97874 | Spray | 262 | — | $359,622 |