Bancroft, Iowa.
Typical home $162,467 (-6.4% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$310 (+57%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Down $11,132 -6%
- $173,599$162,467 since Sep 2025
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.
- Bancroft$853
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Bancroft, IA fell 6.4% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Bancroft, Kossuth County, Iowa
Bancroft is a city of 699 people in Kossuth County. 76% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 24% are rented. Unemployment in Kossuth County was 3.2% in August 2026, and the county had 1.3% fewer 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 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Bancroft is a small city in Kossuth County, Iowa, where most homes are lived in by their owners and fewer residents hold a four-year degree than in many places. The population is younger than in many small Iowa towns, and the typical commute is short. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and a good deal of snow, while summers turn warm in July and the year brings a fair amount of rain and melted snow.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and the building trades also common. Across Kossuth County, some of the largest workplaces are Snap On Tools, Hormel Food and Kossuth Regional Health Center. Unemployment across the county is a little higher than a year ago, and the county has fewer jobs than the year before.
Things to do. Union Slough National Wildlife Refuge, a protected area, and the Iowa Wetland Management District, also a protected area, are both a short drive away and suit walking and watching wildlife. For a longer outing, Ambrose A. Call State Park is a protected area a longer drive away, and the Blue Earth River is a longer drive away too.
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- 282households
- 13%of adults have a degree
- 10%below the poverty line
- 16 mintypical commute
- 6%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Kossuth County had 6,481 jobs in 2025, 1.3% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 22° and lows near 4°; warmest in July, with highs near 81° and lows near 60°. About 40 inches of snow and 33 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Swea City 5N weather station, 12 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Kossuth County
- Snap On ToolsTool boxes, light gauge metal, manufacturing400
- Hormel FoodProcessed meats manufacturing282
- Trinity HealthPhysicians' offices267
- Algona Comm School DistrictSchool district226FTE
- Kossuth Regional Health CenterCritical access hospital152FTE
- Hy-VeeSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores146
- Aluma a/k/a KLM AcquisitionMetal fabrication118
- IA,Algona-GSS Algona Center-Nursing Care Facilities (Skilled Nursing Facilities)Nursing homes104
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 24 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 2,184 people in all across the county; Bancroft has two 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
- DroughtRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- HailRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Bancroft’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 Kossuth County.
Bancroft home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Bancroft$162,467
- 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 Bancroft address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Bancroft — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.