Decatur, Illinois.
Typical home $104,647 (+3.5% in a year), asking rent $1,057 (+5.4%). Decatur, IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$288 (+111%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $3,567 +4%
- $101,080$104,647 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $24,122 +30%
- $80,524$104,647 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.
- Decatur$549
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in Decatur, IL rose 3.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Decatur, IL rose 5.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Decatur runs $211/mo less than renting one. The gap peaked at $236 in Dec 2025.
That is $846 a month against $1,057 rent: a $549 mortgage payment, plus $185 property tax and $112 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Decatur
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$846
- Renting$1,057
- Mortgage only$549
Property tax · $185/mo 2.12% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Macon County, IL
Insurance & upkeep · $112/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Decatur, Macon County, Illinois
Decatur is a city of 70,522 people in Macon County. Half its households earn more than $51,592 a year and half less, against $62,666 across Macon County; 19% of its people live below the poverty line. 63% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 37% are rented. Unemployment in Decatur was 5.8% in August 2026, and Macon County had 0.3% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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. Decatur is a city in Macon County with a settled, mostly owner-occupied feel: most homes are lived in by their owners, and typical home values and rents sit on the modest side. Incomes in the city run below the county's, and more households live below the poverty line than most would expect of a city this size. Winters are cold, with highs near freezing in January, and summers turn warm in July; snow falls in a modest amount through the colder months, and rain and melted snow are fairly plentiful over the year.
Work. Schools, hospitals and social care employ the most residents, followed by manufacturing, shops, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Among the largest workplaces in Decatur are Decatur Memorial Hospital, Archer Daniels Midland Company and Decatur SD 61. Unemployment has eased over the past year, and the county has added a small number of jobs. Commutes are short, and relatively few people work from home.
Things to do. Staley Field, a stadium, and Scovill Zoo are both in or beside town, and Lake Decatur, a reservoir, is just as close for time on the water. A short drive away, Fort Daniel Conservation Area offers a park to walk in. For a longer outing, Robert Allerton Park, a botanical garden, is a longer drive away.
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- 30,920households
- 22%of adults have a degree
- 19%below the poverty line
- 18 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Macon County had 45,164 jobs in 2025, 0.3% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 34° and lows near 20°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 66°. About 14 inches of snow and 40 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Decatur Wtp weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Decatur
- Decatur Memorial HospitalGeneral hospital1,615FTE
- Archer Daniels Midland Company942
- Decatur SD 61School district654FTE
- Archer Daniels Midland Company650
- Bodine Electric of DecaturLow voltage electrical work464
- Help At HomeHomemaker's service for elderly or disabled persons, non-medical464
- PrimientWet milling corn and other vegetables450
- Mueller Water ProductsBall valves, industrial-type, manufacturing407
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 90 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 13,309 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
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
- Tornadoesrelatively high in parts of DecaturRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Decatur’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively 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 Macon County and the Decatur, IL metro.
Decatur home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Decatur$104,647
- Illinois$295,943
- 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 4 Decatur listings, and the typical home goes pending in 11 days — 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.
- Decatur28.08%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Decatur11
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Decatur299
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Decatur121
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Decatur$112,689
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Decatur96.96%
Zip codes with a Decatur address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Decatur — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Decatur
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 62521 | Decatur | 32,665 | $1,139 | $121,325 |
| 62526 | Decatur | 30,483 | $994 | $98,597 |
| 62522 | Decatur | 15,185 | $1,036 | $89,665 |