Stem, North Carolina.
Typical home $316,739 (-0.0% in a year). Durham-Chapel Hill, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$937 (+129%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $109 -0%
- $316,848$316,739 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $65,456 +26%
- $251,282$316,739 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.
- Stem$1,662
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Stem, NC fell 0.0% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Stem, Granville County, North Carolina
Stem is a town of 960 people in Granville County. Half its households earn more than $95,625 a year and half less, against $71,111 across Granville County; 3% of its people live below the poverty line. 98% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 2% are rented. Unemployment in Granville County was 3.4% in August 2026, and the county had 3.8% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Stem is a very small town in Granville County, home to fewer people than most towns of any size. Nearly everyone who lives here owns their home, and household incomes run well above the county's, with very few residents living below the poverty line. Winters are cold but not severe, summers are hot, and rain and melted snow fall in fair measure through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and government also employing many. Across Granville County, some of the largest workplaces are Central Regional Hospital, Altec Industries and Granville County Schools. The typical commute is a long one, and a good number of people work from home.
Things to do. The Neuse River and Stagville, an archaeological site, are both a short drive away. A longer drive brings you to Falls Lake, a reservoir, and to the North Carolina Botanical Garden. These give a choice between time by the water and a quieter afternoon among history and gardens.
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- 29%of adults have a degree
- 3%below the poverty line
- 31 mintypical commute
- 18%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Granville County had 21,067 jobs in 2025, 3.8% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 49° and lows near 30°; warmest in July, with highs near 89° and lows near 70°. About 47 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Oxford Ag weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Granville County
- Central Regional HospitalPsychiatric hospital1,862FTE
- Murdoch Developmental Center/DHHSIntellectual and developmental disability facilities, residential1,389
- Altec IndustriesManufacturing1,071
- ADUSA Dist DC 09 ButnerGeneral warehousing and stora970
- Granville County SchoolsSchool district839FTE
- Bureau of Prisons/federal Prison SystemFederal government · Department of Justice717
- Granville Medical CenterGeneral hospital446FTE
- CertainTeed LLC - OxfordRoofing coatings made from purchased asphaltic materials348
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 38 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 8,128 people in all across the county; Stem has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026); 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
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- HurricanesRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Stem’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 Granville County and the Durham-Chapel Hill, NC metro.
Stem home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Stem$316,739
- North Carolina$332,159
- 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.
- Stem13
Zip codes with a Stem address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Stem — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.