Dayton, Iowa.
Typical home $155,138 (+5.7% in a year). Fort Dodge, IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$391 (+93%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $8,342 +6%
- $146,797$155,138 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $24,785 +19%
- $130,354$155,138 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.
- Dayton$814
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 20 years.
Typical home values in Dayton, IA rose 5.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Dayton, Webster County, Iowa
Dayton is a city of 772 people in Webster County. Unemployment in Webster County was 3.8% in August 2026, and the county had 1.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Webster 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Dayton is a very small city in Webster County, Iowa, where neighbors tend to know one another. The population is older than in most of the country, and incomes in the county run a little below the national picture. Homes here are priced modestly, and only a minority of adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cold and snowy, with January highs staying below freezing, while July brings warm days and the year is reasonably wet.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops, and restaurants and hotels also providing jobs. Across Webster County, some of the largest workplaces are Iowa Central Community College, Trinity Regional Medical Center and the Fort Dodge Comm School District. Commutes are fairly long, and very few people work from home. Unemployment in the county is low and about where it stood a year earlier, though the county has lost a small share of its jobs over the past year.
Things to do. The Boone River is a short drive away, and so are Dolliver Memorial State Park and Pilot Mound State Forest, protected areas suited to walking and time outdoors. Farther afield, a longer drive brings you to Reiman Gardens, a botanical garden, and to Ledges State Park, another protected area.
Report a mistake
- 20%of adults have a degree
- 10%below the poverty line
- 27 mintypical commute
- 2%work from home
What people in Webster County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Webster County had 17,328 jobs in 2025, 1.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 28° and lows near 9°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 63°. About 36 inches of snow and 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Boone weather station, 18 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Webster County
- Iowa Central Community CollegeTwo-year college640
- Trinity Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital521FTE
- Fort Dodge Comm School DistrictSchool district500FTE
- Elanco Fort DodgeVaccines manufacturing462
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters314
- Nestle Purina PetCareAnimal feeds, prepared, dog and cat, manufacturing301
- CJ Bio AmericaFeeds, prepared, for animals manufacturing256
- Hy-VeeSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores256
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 52 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 5,616 people in all across the county; Dayton 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
- HailVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Dayton’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 Webster County and the Fort Dodge, IA metro.
Dayton home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Dayton$155,138
- 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 Dayton address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Dayton — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.