Bertram, Iowa.
Typical home $343,941 (+5.2% in a year). Cedar Rapids, IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$987 (+121%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $17,054 +5%
- $326,887$343,941 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $77,347 +29%
- $266,595$343,941 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.
- Bertram$1,805
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Bertram, IA rose 5.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Bertram, Linn County, Iowa
Bertram is a city of 269 people in Linn County. Half its households earn more than $86,786 a year and half less, against $77,649 across Linn County; 2% of its people live below the poverty line. Unemployment in Linn County was 4.0% in August 2026, and the county had 0.3% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Linn 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Bertram is a very small Iowa town in Linn County, and Abbe Creek runs in or beside town. Household incomes are above the county's, and very few people live below the poverty line. Fewer adults hold a four-year degree here than in most places, though many do. Winters are cold, with January highs near freezing and lows well below it, and summers are warm; a fair amount of snow falls each year alongside the rain.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in manufacturing, shops and professional and business services. Across Linn County, the biggest workplaces include Mercy Medical Center, the Cedar Rapids Community School District and St. Luke's Methodist Hospital. The commute is fairly short for most people, and a share of residents work from home.
Things to do. Abbe Creek runs in or beside town, and Palisades-Kepler State Park is a short drive away for time outdoors. Also a short drive away is the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, and the African American Museum of Iowa is close by too. For a longer outing, the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum is a longer drive away.
Report a mistake
- 33%of adults have a degree
- 2%below the poverty line
- 21 mintypical commute
- 14%work from home
What people in Linn County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Linn County had 125,508 jobs in 2025, 0.3% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 30° and lows near 12°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 63°. About 34 inches of snow and 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Cedar Rapids #1 weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Linn County
- Mercy Medical CenterMedical doctors' offices2,692
- Cedar Rapids Comm School DistrictSchool district2,448FTE
- St. Lukes Methodist HospitalGeneral hospital1,897FTE
- Linn-Mar Comm School DistrictSchool district1,161FTE
- College Comm School DistrictSchool district927FTE
- Frito LAYBreakfast cereal manufacturing885
- BAE SystemsSearch and detection systems and instruments manufacturing814
- FedExCourier and express delivery services626
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 380 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 38,500 people in all across the county; Bertram has none 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
- Strong windRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Bertram’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 Linn County and the Cedar Rapids, IA metro.
Bertram home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Bertram$343,941
- 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 Bertram address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Bertram — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.