Castalia, Iowa.
Typical home $296,301 (+12.1% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$808 (+108%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Up $31,888 +12%
- $264,414$296,301 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.
- Castalia$1,555
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Castalia, IA rose 12.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Castalia, Winneshiek County, Iowa
Castalia is a city of 145 people in Winneshiek County. 93% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 7% are rented. Unemployment in Winneshiek County was 2.5% in August 2026, and the county had 0.3% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Winneshiek 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Castalia is a very small city in Winneshiek County, Iowa, where nearly everyone lives in a home they own. Poverty is lower than in many places, and the typical home value sits in a middle range for a rural Iowa town. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and a good deal of snow, while summers turn warm in July, and precipitation falls through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by manufacturing, shops and the building trades. Relatively few adults hold a four-year degree, and some people work from home. Across Winneshiek County, the largest workplaces include Northeast Iowa Community College, Luther College and Winneshiek Medical Center, and unemployment there is low and little changed from a year earlier.
Things to do. The Ossian Opera House, a theatre, is a short drive away. Farther afield, a longer drive reaches Effigy Mounds National Monument, an archaeological site, and the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum. Yellow River State Forest, a protected area, is also a longer drive away for time outdoors.
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- 10%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
- 9%work from home
What people in Winneshiek County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Winneshiek County had 10,515 jobs in 2025, 0.3% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 26° and lows near 7°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 61°. About 40 inches of snow and 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Postville weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Winneshiek County
- Northeast Iowa Community CollegeTwo-year college664
- Luther CollegeUniversity or college454
- Winneshiek Medical CenterCritical access hospital428FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters297
- Stanley Engineered FasteningBolts, metal, manufacturing270
- Decorah Community School DistrictSchool district255FTE
- Reilly Construction CoConstruction management, mass transit208
- Iowa Rotocast PlasticsCoolers or ice chests, plastics, manufacturing204
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 25 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 2,544 people in all across the county; Castalia has none of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals 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
- HailRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Castalia’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 Winneshiek County.
Castalia home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Castalia$296,301
- 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 Castalia address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Castalia — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.