States · Arkansas · Saint Francis County

Wheatley, Arkansas.

Typical home $86,164 (-2.6% in a year). Forrest City, AR metro.

What it costs per month · Wheatley $452/mo

to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$103 (+29%) since Jan 2020.

What the home itself did
1 year
Down $2,315 -3%
$88,479$86,164 since Sep 2025
5 years
Down $16,292 -16%
$102,456$86,164 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.

$500 $1,000 $1,500 $2,000 2002 2006 2010 2014 2018 2022 2026 Wheatley $452 Arkansas $1,177 United States $1,922
$500 $1,000 $1,500 $2,000 2002 2010 2018 2026
  • Wheatley$452
  • Arkansas$1,177
  • United States$1,922

At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.

Typical home values in Wheatley, AR fell 2.6% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.

Living in Wheatley, St. Francis County, Arkansas

Wheatley is a city of 279 people in St. Francis County. Unemployment in St. Francis County was 5.1% in August 2026, and the county had 0.3% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in St. Francis County work in schools and health care, then shops.

People 279 in the 2020 census
Household income Too few homes in Wheatley for the Census survey to measure.
Unemployment 5.1% St. Francis County, August 2026; 6.2% a year before
Homes Too few homes in Wheatley for the Census survey to measure.

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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Wheatley is a very small city in St. Francis County, Arkansas, where homes are modestly priced and few residents hold a four-year degree. Poverty is low for a place with incomes like these, and few people work from home. Winters are cold but short on snow, summers get hot, and rain falls steadily through the year.

Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with shops, manufacturing, and transport and warehousing close behind. Across St. Francis County, the largest workplaces include the Forrest City School District, Boar's Head Co, which makes sausage casings, and the federal prison system. The job market has been soft, with unemployment lower than a year ago but jobs slightly fewer than the year before.

Things to do. The nearby places are mostly water and wild land, each a longer drive away. The Cache River National Wildlife Refuge is protected wetland, and Village Creek State Park and Louisiana Purchase State Park are protected areas for walking and time outdoors. Beaty Lake is a lake to visit if you prefer a quiet spot by the water.

Report a mistake
  • 5%of adults have a degree
  • 4%below the poverty line
  • 4%work from home

What people in St. Francis County work in

  • Schools, hospitals and social care25%
  • Shops (retail)14%
  • Manufacturing13%
  • Transport, warehouses and utilities9%
  • Government8%
  • Restaurants, hotels and entertainment8%

Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. St. Francis County had 6,705 jobs in 2025, 0.3% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Weather through the year

Average daily high and low for each month: coldest in January, 48° and 31°; warmest in July, 90° and 72° 40° 60° 80° 100° J 48° 31° F M A M J J 90° 72° A S O N D
Average daily high and low for each month: coldest in January, 48° and 31°; warmest in July, 90° and 72° 40° 60° 80° 100° J 48° 31° F M A M J J 90° 72° A S O N D

Coldest in January, with highs near 48° and lows near 31°; warmest in July, with highs near 90° and lows near 72°. About 3 inches of snow and 51 inches of rain and melted snow a year.

Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Brinkley weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).

Largest workplaces in St. Francis County

  1. Boar's Head CoCollagen sausage casings made from purchased hides604
  2. Forrest City School DistrictSchool district322FTE
  3. Bureau of Prisons/federal Prison SystemFederal government · Department of Justice270
  4. WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters246
  5. East Arkansas Community CollegeTwo-year college231
  6. Core-Mark Forrest City202
  7. Palestine-wheatley Sch. Dist SchoolsSchool district163FTE
  8. Belleville Shoe South Inc., Mid-South DivisionFootwear, men's, manufacturing141

Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 12 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,601 people in all across the county; Wheatley has two of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026) 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

  1. TornadoesVery high
  2. DroughtRelatively high
  3. Strong windRelatively high
  4. Ice stormsRelatively high
  5. Heat wavesRelatively high
  6. EarthquakesRelatively moderate

FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Wheatley’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 St. Francis County and the Forrest City, AR metro.

Wheatley home values

Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.

$100,000 $200,000 $300,000 2018 2020 2022 2024 2026 Wheatley $86,164 Arkansas $224,158 United States $366,157
$100,000 $200,000 $300,000 2018 2022 2026
  • Wheatley$86,164
  • Arkansas$224,158
  • 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.

JFMAMJJASOND
2026
2025
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
falling flat warming hot overheating runaway

Zip codes with a Wheatley address

A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Wheatley — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.

Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.