Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
Typical home $219,276 (+4.4% in a year), asking rent $944 (+4.6%). Cape Girardeau, MO-IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$615 (+115%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $9,233 +4%
- $210,043$219,276 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $44,528 +25%
- $174,748$219,276 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.
- Cape Girardeau$1,151
- Missouri$1,393
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Cape Girardeau, MO rose 4.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Cape Girardeau, MO rose 4.6% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Cape Girardeau runs $559/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $595 in Oct 2023.
That is $1,503 a month against $944 rent: a $1,151 mortgage payment, plus $118 property tax and $235 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Cape Girardeau
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$1,503
- Renting$944
- Mortgage only$1,151
Property tax · $118/mo 0.64% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Cape Girardeau County, MO
Insurance & upkeep · $235/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Cape Girardeau, Cape Girardeau County, Missouri
Cape Girardeau is a city of 39,540 people in Cape Girardeau County. Half its households earn more than $55,658 a year and half less, against $68,464 across Cape Girardeau County; 21% of its people live below the poverty line. 54% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 46% are rented. Unemployment in Cape Girardeau was 4.1% in August 2026, and Cape Girardeau County had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then restaurants and hotels.
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. Cape Girardeau is a small city on the Mississippi River in southeast Missouri, with a younger population than much of the country. Incomes run below the county's, and more people live below the poverty line than you might expect for the area, while owners and renters are fairly evenly balanced among the homes. Winters are cold and summers are hot, with a good deal of rain and melted snow across the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by restaurants, hotels and entertainment, and shops. Among the largest workplaces in town are Saint Francis Medical Center, Southeast Missouri State University and Cape Girardeau 63 Schools. Commutes are short, and unemployment is a little lower than it was a year ago.
Things to do. In town, the Broadway Theatre and the Rosemary Berkel and Harry L. Crisp II Museum offer an evening out or a quiet afternoon, and Fort D is a fort in or beside town. A longer drive away is Trail of Tears State Park, a protected area for walking and time outdoors.
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- 16,364households
- 35%of adults have a degree
- 21%below the poverty line
- 16 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Cape Girardeau County had 41,550 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more than 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, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cape Girardeau
- Saint Francis Medical CenterGeneral hospital2,553FTE
- SoutheasthealthGeneral hospital1,688FTE
- Southeast Missouri State UniversityUniversity or college1,071
- Cape Girardeau 63 SchoolsSchool district733FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters422
- Drury Hotels Company, LLCHotels363
- Lutheran HomeHomes for the aged with nursing care341
- Century Casino Cape GirardeauCasinos315
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 56 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 8,944 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) 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
- Winter weatherVery high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- EarthquakesRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Cape Girardeau’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 Cape Girardeau County and the Cape Girardeau, MO-IL metro.
Cape Girardeau home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cape Girardeau$219,276
- Missouri$265,387
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Cape Girardeau listings, and the typical home goes pending in 15 days — the market is cooling.
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
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Cape Girardeau23.06%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Cape Girardeau15
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Cape Girardeau197
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Cape Girardeau73
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Cape Girardeau$241,067
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Cape Girardeau97.28%
Zip codes with a Cape Girardeau address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cape Girardeau — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Cape Girardeau
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 63701 | Cape Girardeau | 39,345 | $931 | $242,728 |
| 63703 | Cape Girardeau | 8,201 | $1,100 | $116,041 |
| 63785 | Whitewater | 1,282 | — | $272,855 |