De Kalb, Missouri.
Typical home $300,382 (+8.8% in a year). St. Joseph, MO-KS metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$738 (+88%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Up $24,315 +9%
- $276,067$300,382 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.
- De Kalb$1,577
- Missouri$1,393
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in De Kalb, MO rose 8.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in De Kalb, Buchanan County, Missouri
De Kalb is a town of 233 people in Buchanan County. Unemployment in Buchanan County was 4.1% in August 2026, and the county had 1.1% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Buchanan 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. De Kalb is a very small town in Missouri, in Buchanan County, where people tend to know one another. Few adults here hold a four-year degree compared with the country as a whole, and the typical home is valued well above what the town's small size might suggest. The commute to work is a fairly long one.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops, and restaurants and hotels also employing many. Across Buchanan County, the largest workplaces include Heartland Regional Medical Center, Altec Industries and Triumph Foods. Unemployment in the county is a little lower than it was a year ago, and the county has added a small number of jobs over the past year.
Things to do. Lewis and Clark State Park, a protected area, and Bean Lake are both a short drive away, which makes them easy choices for time outdoors. A longer drive brings you to the Pony Express Museum, one of the better known museums in the region. Winters are cold and snowy, with a good deal of rain and melted snow across the year, and summers are warm.
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- 7%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
- 28 mintypical commute
What people in Buchanan County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Buchanan County had 46,348 jobs in 2025, 1.1% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 36° and lows near 18°; warmest in July, with highs near 88° and lows near 69°. About 17 inches of snow and 36 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Atchison weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Buchanan County
- Heartland Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital3,892FTE
- Altec IndustriesManufacturing2,538
- Triumph FoodsPork carcasses, half carcasses, and primal and sub-primal cuts produced in slaughtering plants2,245
- Lehr Construction CompanyConstruction management, industrial building1,176
- St. Joseph SchoolsSchool district1,171FTE
- Boehringer Ingelheim Animal HealthVaccines manufacturing878
- THE Hillshire Brands CompanyMeat processed from carcasses829
- Clarios - St. Joseph MO DAPStorage battery manufacturing709
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 108 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 22,353 people in all across the county; De Kalb has none of its own. 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
- HailRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in De Kalb’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 Buchanan County and the St. Joseph, MO-KS metro.
De Kalb home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- De Kalb$300,382
- Missouri$265,387
- 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 De Kalb address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls De Kalb — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in De Kalb
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 64484 | Rushville | 940 | — | $226,111 |
| 64440 | De Kalb | 900 | — | $311,764 |