Wake Forest, North Carolina.
Typical home $504,021 (-1.0% in a year), asking rent $1,798 (+2.9%). Raleigh-Cary, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,418 (+116%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $5,031 -1%
- $509,051$504,021 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $76,962 +18%
- $427,059$504,021 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.
- Wake Forest$2,645
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 21 years.
Typical home values in Wake Forest, NC fell 1.0% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Wake Forest, NC rose 2.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Wake Forest runs $1,684/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $1,931 in May 2024.
That is $3,482 a month against $1,798 rent: a $2,645 mortgage payment, plus $297 property tax and $540 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Wake Forest
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$3,482
- Renting$1,798
- Mortgage only$2,645
Property tax · $297/mo 0.71% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Wake County, NC
Insurance & upkeep · $540/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 Wake Forest, Wake County, North Carolina
Wake Forest is a town of 47,601 people in Wake County. Half its households earn more than $123,802 a year and half less, against $105,768 across Wake County; 4% of its people live below the poverty line. 74% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 26% are rented. Unemployment in Wake Forest was 3.3% in August 2026, and Wake County had 1.9% 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. Wake Forest is a town in Wake County where most homes are lived in by their owners, and household incomes run above the county's. Few residents live below the poverty line, and most adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cool and summers warm, with rain and some melted snow spread across the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by professional and business services, shops and manufacturing. Among the largest workplaces in Wake Forest are Wegmans Food Markets, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Walmart. Unemployment is a little lower than a year ago, and Wake County has added jobs over the past year, though the typical commute is a fairly long one and many people work from home.
Things to do. Triangle Metro Zoo is a short drive away. A longer drive brings you to Falls Lake, a reservoir with a state recreation area along its shore, and to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, one of the better known museums in the region.
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- 18,403households
- 60%of adults have a degree
- 4%below the poverty line
- 31 mintypical commute
- 29%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Wake County had 665,775 jobs in 2025, 1.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 49° and lows near 28°; warmest in July, with highs near 87° and lows near 68°. About 48 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Falls Lake weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Wake Forest
- Arbormetrics SolutionsLandscaping services749
- Wegmans Food MarketsRetail supermarkets392
- Southeastern Baptist Theological SeminaryUniversity or college348
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters341
- TargetDiscount department stores311
- Harris Teeter Supermarkets, Inc.Supermarkets and other grocery stores199
- Sam's ClubWarehouse clubs and supercenters198
- Lowe's Companies, INCHomecenter177
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 29 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,769 people in all. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24). 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
- HailRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingrelatively high in parts of Wake ForestRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Wake Forest’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 Wake County and the Raleigh-Cary, NC metro.
Wake Forest home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Wake Forest$504,021
- 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 2 Wake Forest listings, and the typical home goes pending in 41 days — the market is cooling.
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.
- Wake Forest41.53%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Wake Forest41
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Wake Forest509
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Wake Forest127
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Wake Forest$516,363
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Wake Forest98.63%
Zip codes with a Wake Forest address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Wake Forest — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.