Cherokee, Iowa.
Typical home $148,915 (+1.7% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$395 (+102%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $2,455 +2%
- $146,460$148,915 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $25,778 +21%
- $123,137$148,915 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.
- Cherokee$782
- 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 Cherokee, IA rose 1.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Cherokee, Cherokee County, Iowa
Cherokee is a city of 5,199 people in Cherokee County. Half its households earn more than $61,750 a year and half less, against $71,269 across Cherokee County; 18% of its people live below the poverty line. 68% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 32% are rented. Unemployment in Cherokee County was 2.6% in August 2026, and the county had 1.0% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in shops, then schools and health care.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Cherokee is a small city in northwest Iowa where residents are somewhat older than in many places, and most households own the home they live in. Incomes in town run below the county's, and a notable share of residents live below the poverty line. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while July brings warm summer days, and moisture falls steadily through the year as rain and melted snow.
Work. Residents work mostly in shops, in schools, hospitals and social care, in manufacturing, and in banks, insurance and property. Among the largest workplaces in town are Cherokee Regional Medical Center, the Cherokee Community School District and the Mental Health Institute. Commutes are short, and unemployment in Cherokee County is low and close to where it stood a year earlier.
Things to do. The Cherokee Sewer Site, an archaeological site, lies in or beside town and is the nearest of the places worth knowing about. A longer drive away are the Living Heritage Tree Museum and Bluebird Creek, a river. Indian Village Site, another archaeological site, is also a longer drive away.
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- 2,289households
- 25%of adults have a degree
- 18%below the poverty line
- 12 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Cherokee County had 4,908 jobs in 2025, 1.0% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 27° and lows near 7°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 62°. About 38 inches of snow and 31 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Cherokee weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cherokee
- Cherokee Regional Medical CenterCritical access hospital209FTE
- Cherokee Comm School DistrictSchool district177FTE
- Mental Health InstitutePsychiatric hospital153FTE
- Hy-VeeSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores110
- Fareway Stores, Inc. 502 CherokeeGrocery stores82
- Lopez FoodsProcessed meats manufacturing59
- Care Initiatives58
- Careage HillsSkilled nursing facilities53
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 10 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 965 people in all. 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
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Cherokee’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 Cherokee County.
Cherokee home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cherokee$148,915
- Iowa$236,623
- 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 3 Cherokee listings — 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.
- Cherokee31.94%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Cherokee38
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Cherokee10
Zip codes with a Cherokee address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cherokee — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.