Verdict grades housing conditions; buyer-timing, investor cash-flow, supply-tightness and county macro scores answer different questions — each in its own section.
Buyer / sellerbuyer-timing lens
Balanced Market
DOM: 56d (stable) · Market Dynamics rolling median · hourly
Score Components
Payment Burden (25%)25
Valuation Gap (25%)10
Supply & Demand (20%)100
Buy vs Rent (15%)50
Cancellation Rate (10%)50
Days on Market (5%)60
Balanced market in 27604. List price is roughly fair — focus on condition and value. Payment burden: 28.6% of median income. Median days on market: 56. Renting is approximately 47% cheaper than buying (price-to-rent ratio: 17.7).
Balanced market conditions. Prices roughly aligned with fundamentals — similar to stable periods in 2014-2015.
COOLINGBALANCED
Market is cooling with expanding inventory. Conditions are balanced between buyers and sellers. Prices down 2.6% YoY.
Address lookup$99 report path
Look Up an Address in 27604
Just type the street — we'll auto-scope the search to ZIP 27604.
A single median rises whenever expensive homes become a bigger share of what sells, even if no tier got more expensive. These are the tiers underneath it, computed from recorded arms-length deed transactions in Wake.
Aggregate median -2.6% YoY in this ZIP, but the under-$500k tier is -1.1% — the aggregate and the entry tier are moving together. Over the same year the under-$500k share of sales moved from 80.9% to 82.1% (+1.2pp) and the $1M+ share from 4.3% to 3.0% (-1.3pp).
Current tiers · 12 months to Aug 25floor 10 sales/tier
2 tiers had too few sales in this ZIP and are shown at county or metro level — see the stamp on each row.
Tier
Median
$/sqft
Sales
Share
Source
Under $250k
$208k
$165
40
7.5%
ZIP
$250k–$500k
$360k
$209
397
74.6%
ZIP
$500k–$750k
$578k
$353
54
10.2%
ZIP
$750k–$1M
$835k
$353
25
4.7%
ZIP
$1M–$1.5M
$1.20M
$430
11
2.1%
ZIP
$1.5M–$2M
$1.65M
$377
259
—
COUNTY · Wake, NC
$2M+
$2.43M
$470
156
—
COUNTY · Wake, NC
All sales (the headline median)
$370k
$213
532
100%
ZIP
Share of sales by tier (quarterly)
If the upper tiers widen over time, the headline median rises on composition alone.
Under $250k
$250k–$500k
$500k–$750k
$750k–$1M
$1M–$1.5M
$1.5M–$2M
$2M+
Median within each tier, against the headline median (quarterly)
The blue line is the single number NAR-style reporting quotes. The gold lines are what each tier actually did. Log scale — the tiers span an order of magnitude, and on a log axis equal slopes mean equal percentage moves, which is the comparison being made.
Under $250k
$250k–$500k
$500k–$750k
$750k–$1M
All sales (headline)
National context — not local
NAR's aggregate existing-home median for the United States and the South census region. This is the figure the tiers above are a check on. It is national/regional and says nothing about 27604.
United States
South
Copyright, National Association of Realtors. Reprinted with permission. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FRED publishes a rolling 13-month window for these series.
Tiers computed from Lotvox parcel and deed substrate through Aug 25 (10 later months withheld as partially loaded). Sample floor 10 sales per tier; below it a figure is drawn from the county or metro and labelled, or left blank. Multi-parcel bulk deeds and duplicate records are excluded.
Wake County contextmacro · jobs · debt · migration
ZIP score grades housing; county score adds macro distress (jobs, debt, poverty). They answer different questions.
County Coverage (3 counties)
ZIP 27604 spans 3 counties
Healthy (28)
This ZIP code crosses county lines. Property data shows Johnston (84.3%), Wake (8.6%) and Mecklenburg (7.1%). County metrics below are shown separately for each county.
Johnston (84.3%)
Wake (8.6%)
Mecklenburg (7.1%)
ZIP 27604→3 counties
Johnston County 84.3%Wake County 8.6%Mecklenburg County 7.1%
12-Month Direction
+4Stable
Confidence
100%
DeterioratingStableImproving
Why this score
BuildersLens Market Intelligence
Market Score
40· Weak
Market Score grades housing-market conditions (affordability, valuation, supply). The county Healthy/Moderate/Distressed badge measures economic distress (jobs, debt, poverty) — the two can read differently.
Economic indicators remain stronger than national averages.
Unemployment Rate
3.0%
NC 3.5%US 4.4%
Lower than most U.S. counties
Source: BLS LAUS · 2026-0667d ago
Poverty Rate
10.8%
NC 12.9%US 12.6%
Near national averages
Median Household Income
$79,838
NC $71,866US $82,006
Higher than most U.S. counties
Cost of Living (RPP)
93.8
NC 93.8US 100.3
Lower than most U.S. counties
Home Value (ZHVI)$344,953
County data: BLS, Census ACS, CDC, FBI UCR, Federal Reserve, USDA · Coverage derived from property records · Counties with <2% coverage excluded as likely data errors