Benton, Missouri.
Typical home $200,876 (-2.2% in a year). Sikeston, MO metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$339 (+47%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Down $4,532 -2%
- $205,408$200,876 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.
- Benton$1,054
- Missouri$1,393
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Benton, MO fell 2.2% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Benton, Scott County, Missouri
Benton is a city of 866 people in Scott County. Unemployment in Scott County was 4.0% in August 2026, and the county had about as many jobs in 2025 as 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Benton is a small city and the seat of Scott County in southeast Missouri, with a population that makes it one of the smaller county seats in the state. Homes here are priced well below what many American towns see, and fewer residents live in poverty than is common across the country. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, while summers turn hot by 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, the building trades and professional and business services also employing many. Across Scott County, some of the largest workplaces are Magnum Ice Cream Company, Missouri Delta Medical Center and Sikeston R Schools. The typical commute is a moderate one, and very few people work from home. Unemployment across the county has eased a little compared with a year earlier, and the number of jobs has held about steady.
Things to do. For time outdoors, Caney Creek is a river a short drive away. A longer drive brings you to Horseshoe Lake, a lake that is the best known of the nearby places, and to Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge, a protected area for walking and watching wildlife. Trail of Tears State Park, also a longer drive away, is another protected area close enough for a day out.
Report a mistake
- 4%below the poverty line
- 22 mintypical commute
- 2%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Scott County had 16,184 jobs in 2025, about as many as the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 43° and lows near 26°; warmest in July, with highs near 89° and lows near 69°. About 48 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Scott County
- Magnum Ice Cream CompanyIce cream manufacturing750
- Missouri Delta Medical CenterGeneral hospital708FTE
- Orgill Sikeston Distribution CenterHardware merchant wholesalers553
- Sikeston R-6 SchoolsSchool district500FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters371
- Havco Wood ProductsFlooring, wood, manufacturing247
- Do it BestGeneral warehousing and storage168
- FedExCourier and express delivery services161
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 47 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 4,412 people in all across the county; Benton has none of its own. Hospitals come 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
- Strong windVery high
- Ice stormsVery high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- EarthquakesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Benton’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 Scott County and the Sikeston, MO metro.
Benton home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Benton$200,876
- Missouri$265,387
- 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.
- Benton12
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Benton address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Benton — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.