Ava, Illinois.
Typical home $175,845 (+9.5% in a year). Carbondale-Marion, IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$564 (+157%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $15,194 +9%
- $160,651$175,845 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $46,424 +36%
- $129,422$175,845 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.
- Ava$923
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 11 years.
Typical home values in Ava, IL rose 9.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Ava, Jackson County, Illinois
Ava is a city of 553 people in Jackson County. Half its households earn more than $55,368 a year and half less, against $48,763 across Jackson County; 8% of its people live below the poverty line. 82% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 18% are rented. Unemployment in Jackson County was 4.3% in August 2026, and the county had 9.3% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Jackson County work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Ava is a very small city in Jackson County, Illinois, where most homes are lived in by their owners. Incomes run above the county's, and fewer households live below the poverty line than you might expect for a small town. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are hot, with July the warmest; rain and melted snow add up to a fair amount over the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by shops, restaurants and hotels, and professional and business services. Few adults hold a four-year degree, and almost no one works from home, so most people travel to a job, with a typical commute of a fair stretch of the morning. Across Jackson County, the largest workplaces include Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, Memorial Hospital of Carbondale and Help At Home.
Things to do. Kinkaid Lake is a reservoir a short drive away, and Lake Murphysboro State Park is a protected area, also a short drive off. Piney Creek Ravine State Natural Area is another protected area close by. For a longer outing, Giant City State Park is a protected area a longer drive away.
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- 241households
- 5%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
- 27 mintypical commute
- 1%work from home
What people in Jackson County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Jackson County had 27,609 jobs in 2025, 9.3% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 42° and lows near 25°; warmest in July, with highs near 88° and lows near 68°. About 44 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Carbondale Southern Il Airport weather station, 15 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Jackson County
- Southern Illinois University-CarbondaleUniversity or college5,046
- Memorial Hospital of CarbondaleGeneral hospital1,098FTE
- Help At HomeHomemaker's service for elderly or disabled persons, non-medical677
- University HousingUniversities586
- Facilities and Energy Management (FEM)Universities499
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters307
- Samron Midwest ContractingPavement, highway, road, street, bridge or airport runway, construction245
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters244
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 52 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 6,601 people in all across the county; Ava 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
- Strong windVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- EarthquakesRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Ava’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 Jackson County and the Carbondale-Marion, IL metro.
Ava home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Ava$175,845
- Illinois$295,943
- 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 Ava address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Ava — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.