Arlington, Iowa.
Typical home $264,087 (+11.2% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$845 (+156%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $26,623 +11%
- $237,465$264,087 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $92,941 +54%
- $171,146$264,087 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.
- Arlington$1,386
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 8 years.
Typical home values in Arlington, IA rose 11.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Arlington, Fayette County, Iowa
Arlington is a city of 419 people in Fayette County. Half its households earn more than $38,958 a year and half less, against $60,165 across Fayette County; 15% of its people live below the poverty line. 89% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 11% are rented. Unemployment in Fayette County was 3.5% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Fayette 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Arlington is a very small Iowa city where nearly everyone lives in a home they own. Household incomes sit well below the county's, and a larger share of residents live in poverty than you might expect from the high rate of homeownership. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and a fair amount of snow falls each year; summers are warm, and rain and melted snow are steady through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, the building trades and shops also employing many. Few adults hold a four-year degree, and almost no one works from home. Across Fayette County, the largest workplaces include Upper Iowa University, Palmer Lutheran Health Center and the Oelwein Community School District, and unemployment there is unchanged from a year ago.
Things to do. Backbone State Park, a protected area, is a short drive away, as is Volga River State Recreation Area, a park by the river. Farther out, a longer drive brings you to Spook Cave, a tourist attraction, and to the Elkader Opera House, a theatre.
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- 12%of adults have a degree
- 15%below the poverty line
- 0%work from home
What people in Fayette County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Fayette County had 6,976 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 26° and lows near 6°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 60°. About 36 inches of snow and 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Elkader Ssw weather station, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Fayette County
- Upper Iowa UniversityUniversity or college399
- East Penn OelweinMotor vehicle supplies and new parts merchant wholesalers343
- Oelwein Comm School DistrictSchool district213FTE
- North Fayette Valley Comm School DistrictSchool district172FTE
- Palmer Lutheran Health CenterCritical access hospital135FTE
- Grandview Care CenterSkilled nursing facilities110
- Fareway Stores, Inc. 412 OelweinGrocery stores105
- Starmont Comm School DistrictSchool district103FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 23 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,463 people in all across the county; Arlington has none of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), school districts 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
- Strong windVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Arlington’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 Fayette County.
Arlington home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Arlington$264,087
- 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 Arlington address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Arlington — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.