Columbia, Iowa.
Typical home $249,880 (+2.5% in a year). Pella, IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$551 (+73%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Up $6,147 +3%
- $243,734$249,880 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.
- Columbia$1,312
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Columbia, IA rose 2.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Columbia, Marion County, Iowa
The Census does not count Columbia on its own, so the figures here are Marion County's. Half the county's households earn more than $78,680 a year and half less; 8% of the county's people live below the poverty line. 78% of the county's homes are lived in by their owners and 22% are rented. Unemployment in Marion County was 2.7% in August 2026, and the county had 0.9% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Marion County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Haiku 5.5 wrote this on 22 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Columbia is a small town in Marion County, Iowa, where neighbors tend to know one another. Across Marion County, most homes are lived in by their owners. Winters are cold, summers are warm, and rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, manufacturing, shops, or restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Unemployment is lower than it was a year ago, though the number of jobs dipped slightly last year. Commutes are short, and relatively few people work from home.
Things to do. Knoxville Raceway, a race track, is a longer drive away, as is the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame & Museum. For time outdoors, Red Haw State Park, a protected area, and the Middle River, a river, are also a longer drive away.
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- 13,316households
- 39.9median age
- 32%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
- 21 mintypical commute
- 10%work from home
What people in Marion County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Marion County had 19,508 jobs in 2025, 0.9% 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 85° and lows near 66°. About 37 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Knoxville weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Marion County
- Vermeer Corporation - PellaConstruction machinery manufacturing3,350
- PellaSash, door and window, wood and covered wood, manufacturing3,017
- WeilerConstruction machinery manufacturing755
- 3M Company571
- Pella Regional Health CenterCritical access hospital560FTE
- Central CollegeUniversity or college488
- Pella Comm School DistrictSchool district385FTE
- Precision Pulley & IdlerBelt conveyor systems manufacturing282
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 29 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 9,956 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
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms across Marion County, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very 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 Marion County and the Pella, IA metro.
Columbia home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Columbia$249,880
- 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 Columbia address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Columbia — 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.