Alma, Missouri.
Typical home $222,984 (+7.5% in a year). Kansas City, MO-KS metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$734 (+168%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $15,607 +8%
- $207,377$222,984 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $69,259 +45%
- $153,725$222,984 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.
- Alma$1,170
- Missouri$1,393
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 9 years.
Typical home values in Alma, MO rose 7.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Alma, Lafayette County, Missouri
Alma is a city of 400 people in Lafayette County. 85% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 15% are rented. Unemployment in Lafayette County was 3.7% in August 2026, and the county had 0.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Lafayette 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Alma is a very small city in Lafayette County, Missouri, where nearly everyone lives in a home they own. Incomes are a little below the county's, and a typical home is valued well under what many buyers elsewhere would expect. Winters are cold and summers are warm, with rain and melted snow spread across the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and the building trades also employing many. Across Lafayette County, some of the largest workplaces are Odessa R-VII Schools, Lafayette Regional Health Center and Milbank Manufacturing - Concordia. The usual trip to work is a moderate drive, and very few people work from home. Jobs in the county slipped slightly last year, though unemployment there has eased since a year earlier.
Things to do. The closest outings are along the water, with Cragg Branch and Bear Creek both a short drive away, and Cottonwood Creek is nearby too. For a longer drive, Fort Orleans is a historic fort site, and Van Meter State Park is a protected area. Both are a longer drive away.
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- 10%below the poverty line
- 24 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What people in Lafayette County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Lafayette County had 8,754 jobs in 2025, 0.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 37° and lows near 20°; warmest in July, with highs near 87° and lows near 68°. About 41 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Waverly weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Lafayette County
- Odessa R-vii SchoolsSchool district280FTE
- Milbank Manufacturing - ConcordiaBoxes, light gauge metal, manufacturing260
- Tyson DeliMeat processed from carcasses241
- Advanced IndustriesContainers, light gauge metal, manufacturing179
- Lafayette Regional Health CenterCritical access hospital169FTE
- John Knox Village East & Meyer Care CenterNursing homes145
- Lexington R-V SchoolsSchool district143FTE
- Lafayette Co. C-1 SchoolsSchool district121FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 16 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,846 people in all across the county; Alma has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (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
- Cold wavesVery high
- HailRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Alma’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 Lafayette County and the Kansas City, MO-KS metro.
Alma home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Alma$222,984
- Missouri$265,387
- 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.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Alma address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Alma — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.