Buffalo, Iowa.
Typical home $165,860 (+2.4% in a year). Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, IA-IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$435 (+100%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $3,900 +2%
- $161,960$165,860 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $29,465 +22%
- $136,395$165,860 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.
- Buffalo$871
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 18 years.
Typical home values in Buffalo, IA rose 2.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Buffalo, Scott County, Iowa
Buffalo is a city of 1,176 people in Scott County. 76% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 24% are rented. Unemployment in Scott County was 4.5% in August 2026, and the county had 2.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Scott 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Buffalo is a small city on the Mississippi River side of Scott County, Iowa, and most of its homes are lived in by their owners. Typical home values here are modest, and a larger share of residents live below the poverty line than is true across much of the country. Fewer adults hold a four-year degree than in most places, and few people work from home. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm, 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 manufacturing, shops and restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Across Scott County, some of the largest workplaces are Amazon, John Deere Davenport Works and Genesis Medical Center - Davenport. The county's unemployment rate is a little lower than it was a year earlier, and the county has gained jobs over the past year.
Things to do. Ski Snowstar, a ski area, is in or beside town, which is a rare thing to find on the Iowa side of the river. A short drive away are Wildcat Den State Park, a protected area, and the Pine Creek Gristmill, a museum. For a day out, the Figge Art Museum is a longer drive away.
Report a mistake
- 481households
- 15%of adults have a degree
- 19%below the poverty line
- 6%work from home
What people in Scott County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Scott County had 92,986 jobs in 2025, 2.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 31° and lows near 13°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 65°. About 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Rock Island L&d weather station, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Scott County
- AmazonGeneral warehousing and storage2,718
- Arconic Davenport WorksAluminum ingot, secondary smelting of aluminum and manufacturing2,439
- Davenport Comm School DistrictSchool district2,058FTE
- Tri-City Electric CoElectrical contractors1,967
- Genesis Medical Center - DavenportGeneral hospital1,434FTE
- John Deere Davenport WorksConstruction machinery manufacturing1,144
- Eaton756
- Kraft HeinzMeat products canning made from purchased carcasses650
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 244 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 32,804 people in all across the county; Buffalo 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
- HailRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively 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 Buffalo’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 Scott County and the Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, IA-IL metro.
Buffalo home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Buffalo$165,860
- 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 Buffalo address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Buffalo — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.