Dow, Illinois.
Typical home $256,339 (+2.5% in a year). St. Louis, MO-IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$657 (+95%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $6,307 +3%
- $250,033$256,339 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $49,454 +24%
- $206,885$256,339 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.
- Dow$1,345
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 16 years.
Typical home values in Dow, IL rose 2.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Dow, Jersey County, Illinois
The Census does not count Dow on its own, so the figures here are Jersey County's. Half the county's households earn more than $80,361 a year and half less; 9% of the county's people live below the poverty line. 80% of the county's homes are lived in by their owners and 20% are rented. Unemployment in Jersey County was 3.3% in August 2026, and the county had 2.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Jersey 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Dow is a small community in Jersey County, Illinois, where most homes are lived in by their owners. Winters are cold and bring a fair amount of snow, while summers are warm. The area also gets a good deal of rain across the year. Many residents have lived here for a long time, and the county's median age is on the older side.
Work. Across Jersey County, many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in manufacturing, or in shops and restaurants. Unemployment is lower than it was a year ago, though the number of jobs dipped slightly last year. Few people work from home, and most commute by car to their jobs.
Things to do. The Illinois River, a river a short drive away, is a good place for a walk or a day on the water. Piasa, an archaeological site also a short drive away, draws visitors interested in the region's early history. Cahokia, another archaeological site a longer drive away, is one of the best known ancient sites in the area.
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- 7,965households
- 43.7median age
- 23%of adults have a degree
- 9%below the poverty line
- 27 mintypical commute
- 12%work from home
What people in Jersey County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Jersey County had 5,105 jobs in 2025, 2.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 36° and lows near 19°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 66°. About 12 inches of snow and 42 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Jerseyville Southwest weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Jersey County
- Jersey CUSD 100School district338FTE
- Principia CollegeUniversity or college301
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters300
- Jersey Community Hospital DistGeneral hospital285FTE
- Southwestern CUSD 9School district178FTE
- UDISkilled nursing facilities170
- City of JerseyvilleExecutive offices, federal, state, and local99
- A.L.L.Masonry Construction Co.,IncConstruction84
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 13 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,213 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms across Jersey 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 Jersey County and the St. Louis, MO-IL metro.
Dow home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Dow$256,339
- Illinois$295,943
- 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 Dow address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Dow — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.