Watauga, Tennessee.
Typical home $258,153 (+3.6% in a year). Johnson City, TN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$786 (+138%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $8,993 +4%
- $249,160$258,153 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $74,140 +40%
- $184,013$258,153 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.
- Watauga$1,355
- Tennessee$1,737
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 10 years.
Typical home values in Watauga, TN rose 3.6% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Watauga, Carter County, Tennessee
Watauga is a city of 353 people in Carter County. 95% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 5% are rented. Unemployment in Carter County was 3.9% in August 2026, and the county had 5.1% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Carter County 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Watauga is a very small city in Carter County, Tennessee, where almost everyone owns the home they live in. Poverty is somewhat more common here than people might expect for a town of homeowners, and a typical home is valued well above what the county's household incomes would suggest. Winters are cold and summers are warm, with a little snow each year and plenty of rain.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by manufacturing, shops, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Across Carter County, the largest workplaces include Carter County Schools, Snap-on Tools and Elizabethton Schools. Unemployment across the county is unchanged from a year ago, and the county has added jobs over the past year. Commutes are fairly short, and only a few people work from home.
Things to do. History sits right beside town: Fort Watauga and Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area are both in or next to Watauga. A short drive away are the Watauga River and Boone Lake for time on the water. Farther afield, Bristol Motor Speedway is a race track a longer drive away.
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- 11%below the poverty line
- 19 mintypical commute
- 6%work from home
What people in Carter County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Carter County had 12,639 jobs in 2025, 5.1% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 46° and lows near 26°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 64°. About 6 inches of snow and 48 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Elizabethton weather station, 3 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Carter County
- Carter County SchoolsSchool district842FTE
- Snap-on ToolsTools, hand, metal blade462
- Elizabethton SchoolsSchool district439FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters380
- Milligan UniversityUniversity or college324
- AYMWaterworks and municipal water system valves manufacturing244
- Sycamore Shoals HospitalGeneral hospital216FTE
- Life Care Center of ElizabethtonSkilled nursing facilities198
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 26 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,141 people in all across the county; Watauga has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), colleges from IPEDS (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
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Watauga’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very 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 Carter County and the Johnson City, TN metro.
Watauga home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Watauga$258,153
- Tennessee$330,844
- 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 Watauga address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Watauga — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.