Archer, Iowa.
Typical home $236,254 (+13.8% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$787 (+174%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $28,723 +14%
- $207,530$236,254 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $92,854 +65%
- $143,399$236,254 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.
- Archer$1,240
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 7 years.
Typical home values in Archer, IA rose 13.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Archer, O'Brien County, Iowa
Archer is a city of 117 people in O'Brien County. Unemployment in O'Brien County was 2.4% in August 2026, and the county had 0.7% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in O'Brien County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Haiku 5.5 wrote this on 22 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Archer is a very small city in O'Brien County in northwest Iowa, the kind of town where people tend to know one another. Winters are cold, summers are warm, and the town gets a good deal of snow and rain across the year. The land around it is open farm country.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in manufacturing, in shops, or in farming, forestry and mining. Unemployment in the county is lower than it was a year earlier, though the number of jobs there dipped slightly over the last year.
Things to do. For time outdoors, Indian Lake is a lake and Bluebird Creek is a river, both a longer drive away. DeValois Stadium, also a longer drive away, is a stadium for sporting events.
Report a mistake
- 2%below the poverty line
What people in O'Brien County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. O'Brien County had 6,559 jobs in 2025, 0.7% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 24° and lows near 6°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 62°. About 41 inches of snow and 32 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Sanborn weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in O'Brien County
- Van WykTrucking, general freight, long-distance, truckload244
- Maintainer Corporation of IowaTruck bodies assembling on purchased chassis180
- Sheldon Comm School DistrictSchool district166FTE
- Hy-VeeSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores119
- Sanford Medical Center SheldonCritical access hospital119FTE
- Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn Comm School DistrictSchool district109FTE
- Associated Milk ProducersCheese manufacturing108
- South O'Brien Comm School DistrictSchool district102FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 17 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,507 people in all across the county; Archer 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
- Winter weatherVery high
- HailVery 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 Archer’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 O'Brien County.
Archer home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Archer$236,254
- 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.
Zip codes with a Archer address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Archer — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.