Badger, Iowa.
Typical home $177,866 (+1.5% in a year). Fort Dodge, IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$485 (+108%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $2,646 +2%
- $175,220$177,866 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $33,355 +23%
- $144,512$177,866 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.
- Badger$934
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 17 years.
Typical home values in Badger, IA rose 1.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Badger, Webster County, Iowa
Badger is a city of 522 people in Webster County. Half its households earn more than $72,750 a year and half less, against $68,975 across Webster County; 5% of its people live below the poverty line. 86% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 14% are rented. Unemployment in Webster County was 3.8% in August 2026, and the county had 1.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Webster 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Badger is a very small city in Webster County, Iowa, where nearly everyone lives in a home they own. Household incomes run a little above the county's, and fewer residents live below the poverty line than is typical. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm, with July the warmest. Snow falls often enough to shape the season, and rain and melted snow add up to a fair amount over the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment also employing a good share. Across Webster County, some of the largest workplaces are Trinity Regional Medical Center, Iowa Central Community College and the Fort Dodge Comm School District. Commutes are short, and very few people work from home.
Things to do. A short drive away, Badger Creek and Deer Creek offer quiet waterside spots, and the Oleson Park Music Pavilion is a theatre venue close by. A longer drive brings you to Dolliver Memorial State Park, a protected area with trails and river scenery.
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- 195households
- 26%of adults have a degree
- 5%below the poverty line
- 18 mintypical commute
- 1%work from home
What people in Webster County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Webster County had 17,328 jobs in 2025, 1.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 26° and lows near 7°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 62°. About 39 inches of snow and 35 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Fort Dodge 5NNW weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Webster County
- Iowa Central Community CollegeTwo-year college640
- Trinity Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital521FTE
- Fort Dodge Comm School DistrictSchool district500FTE
- Elanco Fort DodgeVaccines manufacturing462
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters314
- Nestle Purina PetCareAnimal feeds, prepared, dog and cat, manufacturing301
- CJ Bio AmericaFeeds, prepared, for animals manufacturing256
- Hy-VeeSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores256
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 52 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 5,616 people in all across the county; Badger has none of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); 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
- TornadoesVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Badger’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 Webster County and the Fort Dodge, IA metro.
Badger home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Badger$177,866
- 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.
- Badger5
Zip codes with a Badger address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Badger — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.