Alton, Iowa.
Typical home $312,305 (+6.5% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$888 (+118%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $19,015 +6%
- $293,290$312,305 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $76,594 +32%
- $235,711$312,305 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.
- Alton$1,639
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Alton, IA rose 6.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Alton, Sioux County, Iowa
Alton is a city of 1,248 people in Sioux County. Half its households earn more than $98,036 a year and half less, against $86,098 across Sioux County; 3% of its people live below the poverty line. 88% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 12% are rented. Unemployment in Sioux County was 2.2% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 24 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Alton is a small city in Sioux County, Iowa, where nearly everyone owns the home they live in. Incomes run higher than across the county, and relatively few residents live below the poverty line. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and snow is common, while July brings warm summer days.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops, and banks, insurance and property also well represented. Across Sioux County, some of the largest workplaces are Northwestern College, Dordt University and Sioux Center Health. Commutes are short, and few people work from home.
Things to do. DeValois Stadium is in or beside town. A longer drive away are the archaeological sites known as the Cherokee Sewer Site and the Indian Village Site, and the Akron Opera House, a theatre.
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- 592households
- 24%of adults have a degree
- 3%below the poverty line
- 15 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Sioux County had 23,005 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 27° and lows near 9°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 62°. About 35 inches of snow and 30 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Sioux Ctr Southeast weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Sioux County
- Interstates/HarborLow voltage electrical work1,744
- Smithfield Foods _ Sioux CenterMeat extracts made from purchased carcasses427
- Northwestern CollegeUniversity or college407
- Dordt UniversityUniversity or college372
- Sioux Center HealthGeneral medical and surgical hospitals371
- Orange City Municipal HospitalCritical access hospital339FTE
- Pella Corporation Sioux CenterWood window frames and sash manufacturing327
- Rosenboom Machine and ToolHydraulic cylinders, fluid power, manufacturing325
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 67 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 9,032 people in all across the county; Alton has none of its own. Colleges come 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
- HailVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Alton’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. 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 Sioux County.
Alton home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Alton$312,305
- Iowa$236,623
- 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.
- Alton5
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Alton address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Alton — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.